EDITOR’S NOTE: Cheerleader’s Wild Weekend was on USA Up All Night on August 1, 1992; January 8 and August 28, 1993 and February 25, 1994.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mike Justice is the only illegitimate offspring born of a short-lived union between a frustrated English horror movie star and an American film festival groupie. His legacy, therefore, is to obsessively pursue a litany of ill-defined ambitions in the industry (editor, director, actor) while also falling hard and fast for anything with an accent and/or mutton chops. Fortunately, he’s pretty good at distilling his various fizzles, faux pas, and let-downs into uproariously absurd, snarky tales filled with wit, wisdom, and (sometimes) redemption. You can follow Mike on Facebook. 

Something traumatic happened the summer between seventh and eighth grade: the USA Network canceled Commander USA’s Groovie Movies, my favorite Saturday afternoon monster-movie showcase. There was to be no more Video Vault, no more wacky characters, no more Commander USA, himself—soaring superhero and retired Legion of Decency officer—to introduce me to enduring classics like Mausoleum and House of Psychotic Women. He didn’t even get a proper sendoff—he just walked out the door one day and never came back—like Richie Cunningham’s older brother, or my dad that time he left to buy stamps. It took weeks of crestfallen Saturdays to ultimately accept that I’d been ghosted by the Commander.

Naturally, I turned to delinquency; in this case, that meant immediately taking up with a rebound show: USA’s newly launched, more “mature” late-night B-movie series, USA Up All Night. I’d been collecting Elvira’s Thriller Video cassettes for years, and I was already an avid viewer of Saturday Nightmares—so staying up late past The Hitchhiker and Alfred Hitchcock Presents to watch racy comedians host heavily censored sex comedies felt like the next natural step to adulthood. And what an adulthood it promised to be.

USA Up All Night hit at precisely the right age when I was too young to drive, but too jaded for the TGIF lineup, and just beginning to fantasize about what being an independent adult with my own apartment, car, job, and (gasp) love life would be like. If Commander USA had been a weekend Fred Rogers with a fondness for Filipino creature features, then Rhonda Shear, Gilbert Gottfried and company were a cocktail party at the grown-ups table with foot-fetish gags and Vice Academy playing in the background. Every weekend, that VERY 90’s show opener beamed me from my lonely house in the sticks to somewhere infinitely cooler. It all felt so urban (and urbane), like the opening credits to Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, or that Michelob ad with Steve Winwood. I was sure my upcoming adult life was to be a hazy blur of neon, sax solos, palm trees, and guitar riffs. In fact, this whole USA Network era had me thinking I’d most likely grow up to live in a black lacquer-furnished condo with a skyline view, work some ill-defined but highly successful job in some posh office where I’d sport pastel neckties and flirt with my boss, and in my free time I’d call a LOT of chat lines and hang out in night clubs with Sally Kirkland or grocery stores with Linnea Quigley. (The fact that my life really did turn out something like this might possibly be USA’s fault, but I digress).

I devoured the good (Young Frankenstein, Eating Raoul, Fast Times at Ridgemont High), the not-so-good (Hot Chili, Meatballs 3, Hot Times at Montclair High) and everything in between (H.O.T.S., Summer School Teachers, Troma, Cannon, Chuck Vincent, Andy Sidaris, David DeCocteau, New World). One of my favorites was Cheerleaders Wild Weekend (1979) AKA The Great American Girl Robbery. It opens with a Vestron Video logo followed by the Dimension Pictures emblem, so you know it’s class. It was also the producing debut of Chuck Russell (yes, THE Chuck Russell) working with Bill Osco (that dude who was married to Jackie Kong and made Flesh Gordon and Alice in Wonderland: an X-Rated Musical Fantasy). Along for the ride are Osco alums Kristine DeBell (Meatballs) and Jason Williams (Flesh Gordon, himself). Leon Isaac Kennedy (Penitentiary), the exquisite Marilyn Joi (The Kentucky Fried Movie), and The Hills Have Eyes’ own Robert Houston round out the cast—along with a bunch of other actresses any fan of 1970’s T&A will recognize. Speaking of The Hills Have Eyes the movie also boasts a cute actress named Janet Blythe for whom this was her sole credit (subsequently run out of Hollywood by Janus Blythe, no doubt).

The plot is simple: three rival squads of catty, twenty-something “high school” cheerleaders headed for the California state tournament are abducted off a school bus by a small coalition of ex-football players and one random lesbian calling themselves the National American Army of Freedom. The girls are corralled into a cabin in the woods where they’re forced to sit on pillows and bicker amongst themselves. Eventually, the kidnappers get too rapey, so the cheerleaders put their differences aside to mount a daring escape using quaaludes, their panties, and a cigarette lighter. Meanwhile, Flesh Gordon and Bobby from The Hills Have Eyes are off collecting a ransom for the girls in a fun sequence that’s a lot more entertaining and expertly directed than it has any right to be.

Cheerleaders Wild Weekend is a little darker than advertised (not to the extent that, say, Malibu High was, but it does feel like the most Crown International-y non-Crown International film ever). Sold as a hot-and-heavy summertime make-out comedy, it’s really more of a kidnapping adventure/heist thriller with bouts of slapstick, peek-a-boo nudity, and girl fights shoehorned in. As far as summer feels go, it’s more The Final Terror than Little Darlings. Only in the 1970s would producers think it’s cute to slap together a sexy farce based loosely on the Chowchilla School Bus Kidnapping where teenage hostages stage a striptease contest to kill time (it WAS the decade when Benji the dog’s girlfriend got kicked, after all).

Deadly Midwife starts with Lauren (Jessica Lowndes, Adrianna Tate-Duncan from the 2000s version of 90210) meeting with her midwife Julie (Lauren K. Robek), the same woman who helped her mother give birth to her. It’s a sweet scene but there’s a hint of something wrong: Julie needs a door camera and is worried enough about something happening that she gives Lauren the same camera. 

Add that to the flash-forward that we see of Lauren near death and the title Deadly Midwife and you know something bad is about to happen.

Directed by Monika Mitchell and written by Helen Marsh and Carolyn Woolner, this movie wastes no time in letting you in on the fact that something weird is happening. Lauren’s husband Anthony (Matthew MacCaull) is one of those Lifetime — well, Tubi — husbands who starts every day by asking, “Did you take your medication?”

Julie has gone missing. He claims she went back to England to see her ex-husband Harrison and Lauren even gets an email from her, but it all seems suspect. Soon, the new midwife Olivia Wright (Elysia Rotaru, Taiana Venediktov from Arrow and the voice of Black Canary in the Justice Society: World War II cartoon) has taken over. If  I’ve learned anything about having a baby from movies, it’s to never eat or drink anything anyone slightly off ever offers you, like tannis root, red meat or a special smoothie. I mean, Lauren is puking in her kitchen sink and Olivia is pushing this drink on her.

The whole relationship between Lauren and Anthony is weird. After her mother, an art gallery owner, killed herself, he was her therapist and they fell in love which is ethically so not what should happen. Anthony is now a college professor of psychology and — umm, yeah — ethics at Weston College. When she goes to visit him on campus, a young woman named Rachel (Gabrielle Jacinto) is hacking his computer. She claims she’s from the IT department. She also says that Anthony has been fired. He tells Lauren that he was getting around to telling her that.

There are so many things that go wrong here, like Olivia smashing her face into a sink to appear abused and then get to stay in the house, at which point she starts wearing lingerie and eating all the cheese in the fridge, then we learn that Julie has been kidnapped and oh yeah, the cop in charge — Detective Brooks (John Cassini) — is near giallo police in his level of effectiveness. And how does Olivia know the sex of the baby before Lauren?

You can see where this is all going but if you love these movies like I do, you enjoy each twist and turn of ridiculousness. I often yell at the TV during movies like this and I am quite immature, but I feel that we all find our own joy in life.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Vice Academy 4 aired on USA Up All Night on June 9, 1995; March 2, 1996 and March 29, 1997.

Candy (Elizabeth Kaitan, who played this role in Vice Academy 3 to 6) and her new partner Samantha (Rebecca Rocheford) are up against Malathion (Julia Parton), who has broken out of jail again. Yes, it’s the same plot as just about every other one of these films, but you aren’t watching this for the plot.

The Commissioner and Miss Thelma are getting married, as long as our villain and her new man Anvil (Steve Mateo, who was Professor Kaufinger in 3 and Brock in 5) have their sinister way.

Rick Sloane based one of the characters in this movie on his mom. Yes, in a sex comedy. That’s why I love life. Even when things seem dark, weirdness in all its wonder is all around us.

You will learn nothing from this movie. You will not find the secret to any mystery. You will see some girls in 90s underwear and some dumb cop jokes. That said, perhaps those two things are the answer to life.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Van aired on USA Up All Night on July 7 and 8 and November 25, 1989; June 15, 1990 and October 4, 1991.

The song in this movie, “Chevy Van” by Sammy Johns*, is a lie, because the protagonist of The Van, Bobby (Stuart Goetz), drives a 1976 Dodge B200 Tradesman customized by George Barris.

As for me, I grew up with two Ford Custom vans, one a basic panel van that I used to be a landscaper and the other a fully customized one with tables and chairs and shag carpeting. Yeah! 9 miles to the gallon!

Crown International Pictures took what worked for American-International Pictures and their beach party movies and added sex and drugs. This movie comes from the days before AIDS, before women truly being characters with agency in movies (well, not all the time) and even before Porky’s.

What it does have is Danny DeVito as Bobby’s friend Andy. And such well-known vans that two of the automobiles from this movie, Straight Arrow and Van Killer, were released as toy cars.

Bobby wants Sally (Connie Hoffman) but she’s already dating tough guy Dugan (Steve Oliver). So he tries to get with Tina (Deborah White), who is way too good for him, before racing Dugan and rolling his van. He survives and moves on vanless.

Director Sam Grossman only directed this film. Writer Robert J. Rosenthal also wrote The Pom Pom Girls, Malibu Beach and Zapped! while Celia Susan Cotelo was also a writer on Malibu Beach.

If you liked this, I can also recommend Van Nuys Blvd. and, of course, Supervan.

*Nine other songs by the artist are in this: “Early Morning Love,” “Jenny,” “Rag Doll,” “Hang My Head and Moan, “Country Lady,” “You’re So Sweet,” “Peas in a Pod,” “Bless My Soul” and “Hey, Mr. Dreamer.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Swinging Cheerleaders aired on USA Up All Night on November 10 and 11, 1989; May 4 and October 27, 1990 and April 11, 1991.

The fact that a movie called The Swinging Cheerleaders (AKA Locker Room Girls and H.O.T.S. II) is so good rests on the fortune that this was co-written and directed by Jack Hill. It’s a movie that promises cheerleaders and sex. Sure, it delivers that. It also gives you a crime story, a tale of journalism and a wife so enraged by her husband’s infidelity that the one scene she shows up for is volcanic, ending with her screaming that she plans on carving her name into a girl’s anatomy.

Kate (Jo Johnston in her one-and-done role) is writing an article for the college newspaper about how cheerleading demeans women, so she joins the squad. Yet she soon finds herself bonding with the girls.

There’s Mary Ann (Colleen Camp), who wants her boyfriend Buck to stop sleeping around and marry her. Lisa (Rosanne Katon) is the one having an affair with a married professor. And Andrea (Rainbeaux Smith!) just can’t go all the way.

But there are bigger problems. All of the adults are betting on the football games, including the dean, the coach and Mary Ann’s dad, a local businessman. They’re willing to do anything it takes to keep their scam going, too.

Strangely enough, when this movie and The Student Body played a Dallas drive-in, Randall Adams and David Harris were in attendance and used the film as an alibi when they were investigated in the murder of Dallas police officer Robert W. Wood. When Adams said that he had to leave as he didn’t feel comfortable with the content, it led to his conviction. You can learn more in the documentary The Thin Blue Line.

I saw someone on Letterboxd say that “If Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was about college cheerleading, this would be that movie.” What a great way to explain this.

It’s totally not the teen sex romp you think it is, yet it has a scene where multiple people in a row all punch a security guard in the face, which should be a moment in every film.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Pretty Smart aired on USA Up All Night on March 25, 1989; February 9 and 10 and September 21, 1990 and March 30, 1991.

Give director Dimitri Logothetis some credit. Not only did he make this movie, but he also directed Slaughterhouse Rock and Kickboxer: Retaliation.

Daphne “Zigs” Ziegler (Tricia Leigh Fisher,* Stick, C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D) has defeated every way that her parents try to tame her. As she works in a bank, a criminal comes in and tries to get her to give up all the cash. She responds by jumping on top of the counter and stripping off her goth outfit, which is one way to get out of getting shot by a bank robbery.

Her parents decide to send ZIgs and her fraternal twin sister Jennifer (Lisa Lörient) to Greece’s most elite boarding school, Ogilvy Academy. Soon, they find themselves in two different social groups, as Daphne becomes one of the Subs — along with Zero (Patricia Arquette), Yuko (Kimberly B. Delfin, Body Rock) and Torch (Paris Vaughan) — and Jennifer becomes a Preen and starts hanging out with mean girls like Samantha Falconwright, who is played by Julie K. Smith, one of only four women to be in both Playboy and Penthouse,**  where she was Pet of the Month for February 1993. She also trained with Stella Adler and is in so many movies that I’ve watched intently, including the works of Andy Sidaris (she’s Cobra in The Dallas Connection, Return to Savage Beach and Day of the Warrior) and Jim Wynorski (The Bare Wench Project, The Witches of Breastwick).

The girls have one problem that brings them together and that is the dean of the school, Mr. Crawley (Dennis Cole) who is taking nude photos of all of them with hidden cameras when he isn’t sneaking drugs on them and using them to move weight.

Writer Jeff Begun also did the script for Neon City and Saturday the 14th while the other writer, Dan Hoskins, was the writer of Chopper Chicks In Zombietown. It’s a strange movie that at the same time wants to be empowering and then you have Julie K. Smith doing nude scenes, but then it’s girls working together and discovering the power of playing in synth bands. I think the film’s third writer, Melanie J. Alschuler, may be why it feels so much less a teen sex comedy and more a coming of age film. She went on to be an assistant to the Olsen Twins on their Our First Video and The Olsen Twins Mother’s Day Special.

*Her sister Joely Fisher is also in this and to my amazement, they’re both half-sisters of Carrie Fisher.  Their dad is Eddie and their mom is Connie.

**It says this on Julie K. Smither’s IMDB page, but I know that only Alexandria Karlsen, Linn Thomas, Victoria Zdrok were both Playmates and Pets. Teri Weigel was the April 1986 Playmate and was in Penthouse — but not as a Pet — in November 1985 before acting in Cheerleader Camp, Glitch!, Savage Beach, Predator 2, Return of the Killer Tomatoes and adult movies. Ursula Buchfellner was the October 1979 Playmate and German December 1977 Playmate before appearing in Penthouse — but not as a Pet — also in November 1985. She also is in Devil Hunter and Sadomania for Jess Franco. None of these magazines or their titles matter anymore.

You can watch this on Tubi.