EDITOR’S NOTE: Hellraiser was on USA Up All Night on October 26, 1996 and July 25, October 25 and November 8, 1997.

Horror movies don’t scare me. Not anymore. Some of them disturb me, like the cannibal films. But only one still kind of scares me. And that would be Hellraiser.

There was a time, before the eight sequels to the film and BDSM became well-known fodder on shows like Law and Order that Hellraiser seemed like it came from some alien land more than its true origins. The monsters of the piece, the Cenobites, looked like nothing we’d never seen before, all leather, blood and open festering wounds. The idea that sex and pain could be united wasn’t trite back in 1987, so it’s difficult to convey the power and fear this film had. It feels wrong. It feels dirty. It feels evil.

How this movie was made for $900,000 blows my mind. It looks lush and gauzy at times and at others, like when we see Frank’s heart and veins being formed, positively nightmarish. It shouldn’t be this good — it was Clive Barker’s directorial debut after seeing two of his stories, Underworld and Rawhead Rex, get made into films he didn’t agree with. What kind of deal with the devil did this guy make to turn out something so perfect on his first try?

The misconception that many people have of this film is that the Cenobites are the villains or the horrific part of the film. If we go to the poster for proof, it says “Demon to some. Angel to others.” Pinhead and his gang are there to move the story forward and certainly look frightening, but they are bound by the rules of Hell and the Lament Configuration, the puzzle box that sets the events of the film in motion. Matter of factly, these rules aren’t truly defined yet — is Pinhead a tortured soul stuck in the wheels of some hellish bureaucracy? Who created these boxes? None of this matters — “You solved the box. We came.” Yes, it can be that simple. You don’t need to know all of those answers right now. When Frank buys the box and Morocco and solves it, he gets the answer to limitless pleasure and the drug of all drugs — as Frank says, “I thought I’d gone to the limits. I hadn’t. The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits. Pain and pleasure, indivisible.”

That’s one of the real horrors of this film: people will do anything to chase a high. That high may be drugs. It may be pain. It may be a sexual experience that makes the mundane life you’re stuck in — like Julia, bored with a suburban life with a husband she never really wanted in the first place. The chance to be with Frank again, no matter if she has to seduce and kill for him, is everything. Notice that as he gains more muscle and skin with each drop of blood, she becomes more and more attractive, her skin gaining new color.

The main horrors of this film are family and other people. The Cotton family had issues before the Cenobites took one step out of Hell. The most horrific part of the film comes when Frank wearing Larry’s skin, stares at his niece in a moment of sexual longing and says, “Come to daddy.” Sure, there are horror film trappings, but this type of morally bankrupt behavior isn’t something confined to the cinema. So much of the betrayal and madness of Frank and Julia could happen. It happens every day.

Hellraiser exists on the border of reality. It’s fantastic, but it feels like it could happen. It’s the dangerous fiction that could overwhelm your truth if you go too far. In that it’s quite similar to Barker’s Candyman, which posits that saying the name of its titular character three times in a mirror is all it takes for him to come for you. That seems too unrealistic, but do you want to take the chance? And much like the black leather garbed creatures in this film, Candyman must adhere to a dream logic that only comes into our reality when you allow the genie from the bottle.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Almost Hollywood was on USA Up All Night on February 9, 1996.

After this movie, Crown International Pictures took nine years off. I will tell you that that is not because this is a good movie and they felt they’d done all they could do. Quite the opposite. However, in my endless quest to watch every single film they ever released, as well as my slavish addiction to Mill Creek box sets (and now revising it for this month of USA Up All Night), I find myself here, struggling to watch this supposed satire on Hollywood.

This is all about a producer of exploitation and sex videos who suddenly is accused of killing one of his star’s boyfriends and his mistress. It’s a wacky sendup of what I can only assume it was like to make movies in 1994.

I mean, this is a movie that pokes fun at the erotic thriller genre, with the character Abdu clearly an analog of Ashok Amritraj, Menaham Golan and Yorum Globus, played by Greg Rhodes from Ghosthouse and Deadly Manor as a filmmaker who is pretty much making post-porn Gregory Dark movies. Except this makes me wistful for Gregory Dark movies.

In a meta move, India Allen, who was Playboy Playmate of the Year in 1988, as well as ian actress in movies like Silk Degrees and Wild Cactus, plays herself.

Michael Weaver, who wrote and directed this, also shot Dark Eyes and The Sender. He also directed two segments in the movie Night Terror before heading off to do TV work, working as the DP on Pushing Daisies and directing episodes of Californication and Good Girls.

I’ll do anything for Crown International and Mill Creek (and USA Up All Night), I guess. Even this.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Nothing In Common was on USA Up All Night on October 28, 1989.

Nothing In Common is responsible for what I do for a living.

I won tickets to see this movie from a trivia contest on WKST radio in New Castle, PA. As I sat in the theater, I was amazed by the office that David Basner (Tom Hanks) worked in as ad guy. There were markers everywhere, everyone was stressed but having so much fun and people were playing guitars at their desks. Surely advertising was the most fun job ever!

Almost three decades later I can tell you that none of this is true.

David’s parents Max and Lorraine (Jackie Gleason and Eva Marie Saint) have finally split up. David’s just broken up with his girlfriend Donna (Bess Armstrong). And what’s even worse, his dad has lost his job. And at the same time, he’s pitching Colonial Airlines and dating the owner Andrew Woolridge’s (Barry Corbin) daughter Cheryl (Sela Ward).

You can imagine that 14-year-old me was amazed that normal looking guys could dare Sela Ward if they were funny and worked in advertising.

Max has been a horrible husband, father and even caretaker of himself. His diabetes is out of control, leading me to a lifelong fear of losing my feet after watching this. But David comes through for him, even though his father doesn’t deserve it. Oh Garry Marshall, you got me.

This is the movie that took Tom Hanks from funny guy to someone who could be in dramatic movies. Sadly, Gleason would be dead just a year after this film. He’s pretty fearless in it, playing someone who we should have no sympathy for whatsoever. He made this while he was deathly sick with colon cancer, liver cancer, thromboses hemorrhoids, diabetes and phlebitis.

Writers Rick Podell and Michael Preminger would write the TV movie Gleason which starred Grad Garrett as The Great One.

And hey — it has Thompson Twins playing “Nothing In Common” which was their first release as a duo.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Pom-Pom Girls was on USA Up All Night on June 30, July 1 and November 18, 1989; April 14 and December 7, 1990 and August 24, 1991.

Director Joseph Ruben has made some pretty good movies like Dreamscape, The Stepfather, Sleeping With the Enemy and The Good Son. This Crown International Pictures movie was directed by him and written by Robert J. Rosenthal, who also wrote The Van and directed and wrote Zapped! and Malibu Beach.

Johnnie (Robert Carradine) is the hothead. He has a crush on Sally (Lisa Reeves) but he’s dating a tough guy named Duane (Bill Adler). Jesse (Michael Mullins) is the ladykiller and he’s all into Laurie (Jennifer Ashley). These teens end up hanging out, stealing fire engines, getting in chicken races and falling in and out of love.

It’s not as sexual as you think. I mean, there’s sex. But it’s more about growing up. It’s a hang out movie and so much of it doesn’t go anywhere, like the coach who doesn’t like Jesse. But look, Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith is in it and when I saw her name in the credits, I literally said a little prayer thanking whatever intelligent design created her.

For maniacs like me: There’s a scene where Ashley wears a Boy Scouts Of America shirt from the San Gabriel Valley Council. She’s wearing that same shirt again in  Tintorera…Tiger Shark.

You can download this movie with USA Up All Night clips at the Internet Archive.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Slammer Girls was on USA Up All Night on September 16, 1995.

Chuck Vincent made a women in prison movie and yes, I’m shocked too.

Politician Jerry Calwell (Henri Pachard!) has become governor thanks to being tough on crime. Then someone shoots him in the sack the night of the election. There’s a big push to get someone in jail for this crime and it ends up being the innocent Melody Campbell (Devon Jenkin, Twisted Nightmare).

Newspaper reporter Harry Weiner (Jeffrey Hurst) goes undercover at the jail where she’s sent to and he hopes to expose that the ballless Calwell also sells electric chairs, which explains his love of capital punishment.

The prison is packed with adult film actresses because this is a Chuck Vincent movie. There’s Tantala Ray as Tank, Samantha Fox (not the singer) as Mosquito, Sharon Kane as Rita, Colleen Brennan as Professor and Sheri St. Claire as Ginny. There’s also Candy Treat, played by Tally Chanel, who is Calwell’s mistress who wants revenge for her man’s perforated ballbag. Oh yeah! How could I forget that Veronica Hart is in this as the matron, Crabapples, who has a bigger connection to our heroine than anyone knows.

There are also musical numbers.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mr. Mom was on USA Up All Night on December 23, 1994 and January 13 and April 26, 1996.

Mr. Mom sets up so many comedy patterns for the 80s.

Michael Keaton: Born in Pittsburgh — Kennedy Township or McKee’s Rocks — and starting his career on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, Keaton went to LA and his first big role was Night Shift, which led to this movie. His character in his early films is often a very Bill Murray smart everyman who deals with life’s pains before being smart enough to come out on top, a role he would play in Gung Ho — made close to home in Beaver, PA — and Johnny Dangerously. By Beetlejuice and Batman, he was as big a star as it gets. He’s a rare star in that even though his career has had ebbs and flows, he’s always been great in everything he’s made and comes off as, well, a Yinzer. Someone you’d like to have an Iron with. He’s playing that character he’s known for here, a smart guy whom life has treated badly named Jack Butler. He’s lost his auto job and is now the stay-at-home dad while his wife works.

Teri Garr: I wonder if Keaton and Garr ever got into silly Pittsburgh versus Cleveland spats; she’s from Lakewood. Trained in ballet and a student of Lee Strasberg, her career has vacillated between comedy — Young Frankenstein, Tootsie — and drama — The Conversation, One from the Heart, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I always think of her as the mom who is way funnier than she should be, probably because this movie is what I knew her from. Her Caroline is intelligent, capable and more than a match for anyone in the movie.

Martin Mull: It’s difficult to explain to young folks the impact and strangeness of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and the spin-off Fernwood 2 Night. Soap operas were all normal, straight affairs before that show and the fact that a supposedly legitimate talk show from the setting of that show could exist on its own outside of the show is even stranger. By this point in his career, Mull was often the smarmy bad guy, a role he would play in Take This Job and Shove It, Cutting Class, Ski Patrol and so many more.

Important friends: This film follows what would be an 80s staple. Often, the friends and small roles are just as funny as the main characters, like Christopher Lloyd as fellow unemployed car worker Larry, Edie McClurg as a check-out lady (McClurg’s career is filled with memorable small roles), Ann Jillian as flirty mom Joan (as an 11-year-old boy, I had no idea what I was feeling when I saw Ann Jillian, but I knew she didn’t look like any other woman I knew) and another Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman actor Graham Jarvis.

John Hughes: Story editor and producer Lauren Shuler read a John Hughes article in National Lampoon which caused her to become friends with him. A story he told her about taking care of his kids made her laugh; could it be a movie? They finished the script together, but the fact that Hughes lived in Chicago and not Hollywood led to Universal firing him and bringing in TV writers to redo the script. Shuler always claimed that the original script was a lot funnier.

Don’t feel bad for Hughes. He’s already sold National Lampoon’s Class Reunion and National Lampoon’s Vacation. This movie got him a three-picture deal and he made Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science in just two years. By the 90s, he moved back to Chicago and died too young at 59. If you were alive in the 80s, his comedy shaped so much of what you watched, from the popular teen comedies to secretly anarchic movies like Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Vacation.

The idea for this is simple. Jack loses his job, his wife is smarter than him and becomes a success in advertising (a field Hughes knew well, he had created the Edge Credit Card Shaving Test ads) while he stays home all day doing what she used to do. Where it works is the creativity of director Stan Dragoti (Love At First Bite), cinematographer Victor J. Kemper (The Hospital, Eyes of Laura Mars, The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure) and Keaton, who is beyond likable and never gets to be too much like other stars would be in such a high energy role.

Where this movie is ahead of its time is that Caroline still gets the career that she wants. The movie ends seeing her commercial on TV and her getting more money and more respect from her boss.

If anything, Mr. Mom has given us this dialogue, which is as funny today as it was in forty years ago.

Jack: No problem. Come on over here Ron. Let me show you what I’m doing, taking advantage of some of the time off. To, uh, add a whole new wing on here. Gonna rip these walls out and, uh, of course re-wire it.

Ron: Yeah, you gonna make it all 220?

Jack: Yeah, 220, 221. Whatever it takes.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Pink Chiquitas aired on USA Up All Night on September 8 and 9, 1989; January 20 and August 3, 1990 and April 20 and August 9, 1991.

Frank Stallone as Tony Mareda Jr., a former Olympic athlete and now a detective who fights with the mob the whole way to a drive-in located in Beamsville that soon has a meteor crash down and transform all of the women in sex-obsessed maniacs. Soon, Tony and news anchor Bruce Pirrie are trying to save the men of the town from Mary Anne Kowalski (Elizabeth Edwards) and her literal army of women. And their pink tank, too.

The meteor has the voice of Earth Kitt. Along with Stallone, she performs the Paul Zaza-written songs.

Why do I keep doing this to myself? Don’t I need sleep?

This is the only full-length movie that Tony Currie directed and wrote, but he also worked on sound for Prom Night, Naked Lunch and Eastern Promises.

But seriously, this movie doesn’t have much to say. I was hoping that this would be some kind of secret classic — I mean, look at the poster art — but I struggled throughout. In a world where Invasion of the Bee Girls and Voyage of the Rock Aliens are already made, why did this even happen? What new could it say?

The filmmakers did, however, get all they could out of Art of Noise’s “Peter Gunn theme.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: House II: The Second Story aired on USA Up All Night on July 7, 1990; February 8, 1991 and June 13, 1992.

Ethan Wiley, who injected the humor into the original House script, returns to direct the sequel, which comes from a story by Fred Dekker that Wiley adapted. If you disliked the comedy in the original film, well, get ready. This one has no interest in being serious.

Prologue: a young couple gives up their child before an undead gunman murders them in their mansion. That baby grows up to be Jesse (Arye Gross, who was the original voice of Kevin Arnold on The Wonder Years before Daniel Stern took over), who decides to move back into that house with his girlfriend Kate (Lar Park Lincoln, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood). They’re soon joined by goofball friend Charlie (Jonathan Stark, Fright Night) and his wannabe rock star girlfriend Lana (Amy Yasbeck, who met husband John Ritter on the set of Problem Child).

Jesse has insomnia, which leads to him digging through the basement. He discovers a photo of his great-great-grandfather (Royal Dano, who starred in plenty of cowboy films) standing in front of an Aztec temple with a crystal skull in his hand. In the background is Slim Reeser, his one-time partner turned enemy over the ownership of the skull.

At this point, anyone would be happy to discover this photo and move on with their life. But that’s normal life. Here, Jesse and Charlie decide to dig up his ancestor’s grave to find the skull. Imagine their surprise when Gramps is still alive inside his coffin. Compound that with the fact that he wants to bond with his grandson.

It turns out that the house was built with stones from an Aztec temple and that it contains gateways into other time periods with the skull acting as the remote control, if you will. The forces of evil are drawn to the skull, though, so the boys better be ready to defend it.

Meanwhile, a Halloween party ends up with the boys losing their girls and an appearance by Bill Maher as a record exec. A caveman also attacks the party guests looking for a skull and a baby pterodactyl and a caterpillar-dog come along for the ride.

To compound the film’s weirdness, Bill (John Ratzenberger, who like George Wendt in House was a star on TV’s Cheers) comes to inspect the wiring, but he’s really an adventurer with a sword in his toolbox. He leads the guys through a portal — he’s incredibly nonchalant about the proceedings — and helps them save a virgin who is about to be sacrificed.

During a meal where Jesse embraces his new family — yes, a family that includes a dinosaur and a dog-headed caterpillar — Slim makes his return, rising out of a serving dish. He shoots Gramps, who reveals that this is the man who killed Jesse’s parents. Jesse defeats the evil gunfighter, but can’t save Gramps, who tells him that its time to say goodbye.

The cops come to the house, alerted by all the gunfire, and prepare to fire on Jesse. He uses the skull to go back in time to the Old West, taking his friends and pets with him. The film ends with him burying Gramps and using the crystal skull to make his grave, as he follows the old man’s dying advice and doesn’t become addicted to the skull’s magic.

Interestingly enough, Marvel Comics did an adaption of the film!

House 2 is something else. It’s never sure what kind of movie it wants to be, but it gets so strange that you just feel like you have to go along for the ride. The scenes with Bill are great fun and the ending drama always makes me tear up. And you have to love the caterpuppy.

If you’re confused by the fact that this movie has nothing to do with the original House, the way the movie was released in Italy is going to blow your mind.

The Evil Dead was called La Casa there and Evil Dead II followed that numbering. But as we all know, Italian filmmakers are fond of making their own sequels. That’s what led Joe D’Amato to make La Casa 3, which was released here as Ghosthouse*.

Two other sequels in name only, La Casa 4 (released in the US as Witchery) and La Casa 5 (Beyond Darkness) followed. Yes, those are coming up this week as well!

So here’s where it gets confusing. Our House 2 is La Casa 6. And The Horror Show, a movie that is pretty much the same film as Shocker, is La Casa 7. But in the US, The Horror Show was sold as House 3, despite having nothing to do with any of the other movies. Huh? What? A final sequel with William Katt reprising his Roger Cobb role would come out in 1992.

I totally love how confusing things like this can be. And I love the La Casa series!

Check out this article to learn even more about how all of these movies work together.

*Even more confusing — House of Witchcraft is called Ghosthouse 4.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: House aired on USA Up All Night on January 31, 1998.

Steve Miner has so many cinematic sins to deal with — Soul Man, My Father the Hero, Big Bully (the next to last live action film Rick Moranis would appear in), Halloween H20: 20 Years Later — that you almost forget that he started his career making the second and third installments of Friday the 13th and today’s movie, House.

Roger Cobb (William Katt, Carrie) has some issues. As a Stephen King-ian popular horror writer, he feels fenced in by the horror genre. He has writer’s block. His wife has left him. His son disappeared and no one can find him. And the aunt that raised him just hung herself in the haunted house where he was raised.

Cobb intends his next book to be about what he went through in Vietnam, so he decides to move into the house. His strongest memories involve Big Ben (Richard Moll, fulfilling the contract that either he or Robert Englund appear in every 80s horror film), a soldier who bullied him back in ‘Nam who was injured and left behind for the enemy to capture.

Everyone’s a fan of Cobb, from his new neighbor Harold (George Wendt from TV’s Cheers) to his real estate agent and the cops that investigate him. He just wants to write. But with all the monsters in his head — and real monsters in the house — that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen.

Things get worse when his wife visits and turns into a monster, only to be killed by a shotgun blast. At this point, the film flirts with making Cobb the real monster, but it’s a narrative shift that is never followed up on. Then, as he buries his wife, his hot neighbor comes on to him. What he thinks will be a night of hot sex turns out to be him watching her young son, but that goes wrong when little monsters try to steal the kid,

Finally, Cobb falls into his medicine cabinet into an alternate dimension that predates the Upside Down of Stranger Things by several decades. He rescues his son, but not before Big Ben attacks him again. Finally, Cobb realizes that all of his fears are inside his head and he destroys the monster with a grenade before leading the house to find his son and wife, who is magically returned to life.

House was produced by Sean S. Cunningham and featured music by Henry Manfredini, who also worked on the Friday the 13th films. Fred Dekker wrote the original script, but most of the humor is credited to Ethan Wiley.

This is a good example of pre-CGI monster moviemaking. Big Ben looks great, a triumph of practical makeup, as do the creatures that populate the film. And it’s interesting that this movie explores PTSD and the dark side of war years before many were ready to face it.

The look of the film reminds me of late-period Fulci minus the gore. I’m referring to the film stock itself, which doesn’t have much richness, looking more like a TV movie than a theatrical film.

House isn’t a movie that demands that you watch it, but if you’re looking for something in the middle of the night, it always provides a fun distraction. You can’t dislike a film that has a large fish on the wall come to life and try to kill someone.

You can watch it on Tubi.