EDITOR’S NOTE: The Vals was on USA Up All Night on April 12 and 13 and November 15, 1991; April 25, 1992 and February 26, 1993.

Sam (Jill Carroll, Psycho II), Trish (Elena Stratheros), Beth (Michelle Laurita, who danced in Footloose and went on to be the cinematographer on Alanis Morrisette’s videos for “You Oughta Know,” “Jagged Little Pill” and “You Learn” as well as directing that last song’s video as well as “Head Over Feet”) and Annie (Gina Calabrese, The Dungeonmaster, Vicious Lips) are Valley Girls who decide to help Mr. Stanton (John Carradine) keep his house for orphaned boys.

They also get mixed up with the drug dealing Lance (Michael Leon) and Stone (Robert Dyer, Savage Streets), as well as battle the Bevs, girls from the other side of town. Plus Chuck Connors plays Trish’s producer dad who loves the cocaine, he’s on a plane with cocaine and yes Chuck is all lit up again. Sonny Bono plays a “spaced-out musician,” Tiffany Bolling is Sam’s mom (and you thought the MILF in these movies was first in American Pie), Shirley Rothman is Trish’s mother (and also co-wrote the script) and Sharana Lee from Gymkata is a rival Valley Girl.

The Vals was directed by James Polakof, who also made Demon Rage, and co-wrote this with Deborah Amelon, who went on to write Parent Trap III, and Rothman.

Obviously, this is unfairly compared to Valley Girl. It had the title Valley Girls before that movie was released. It was actually filmed first and went unreleased, but when that movie did well, it was finally put out. It doesn’t have the same level of soundtrack, as it features the bands Annine, Daphna Edwards and Unicorn Gang, Wet Picnic and Frankie Bleu. It didn’t even get to film at Sherman Oaks Mall, instead taking place in a secondary shopping plaza in Stockton, CA, the Weberstown Mall. Unlike so many malls, it’s still in business.

This movie is way better than it needs to be.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: New York’s Finest was on USA Up All Night on July 12, 1991; May 2, 1992; March 20 and April 16, 1993.

Chuck Vincent and USA Up All Night just go together.

Dougie (Scott Baker) is a crossdressing man who decides to help three sex workers — Loretta (Jennifer Delora, Deadly Manor), Joy Sugarman (Ruth Collins, Cemetery High, Blood Sisters) and Carley Porter (Heidi Paine) — escape their pimp Bunny (Veronica Hart, adult star Sarah Jane Hamilton) and start looking for rich men to make their husbands.

It starts with a coke party and ends with the ladies actually falling in love. It’s How to Marry a Millionaire but you know, a Chuck Vincent movie. I mean that in the nicest way possible. I genuinely enjoyed every minute of this movie, which sure, is one that exists to show naked women, but it also has a cute sense of humor and some heart. Who knew?

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Getting Lucky aired on USA Up All Night on May 24 and 25 and December 6, 1991; July 11, 1992; April 2 and July 31, 1993; August 19, 1994 and February 26, 1995.

Bill Higgins (Steven Cooke) is saving up for medical school by acting as the basketball team’s towel boy. He’s also has a crush on Krissi (Lezlie Z. McCraw), who he ends up pouring spoiled milk all over. So he quits that job and goes back to recycling for a living and finds Lepkey (Garry Kluger) the leprechaun, who gives Bill the three wishes you expect.

Those wishes include a date with Krissi that has her leave him for her boyfriend, a new car wish gets Bill a Pinto and then, as Tony tries to sexually assault Krissi — this movie got strange quick — Bill asks to be transformed in a way that he can protect her. So he becomes a cat. Later, he gets shrunken down into her underwear and somehow still gets to be her boyfriend and eventual husband, but first, he has to fight that rapist boyfriend again.

Michael Paul Girard directed and wrote this, but wanted to call it Wish Me Luck. Getting Lucky was remade, sort of, under that title in 1995 by Phillip J. Jones. Girard also directed Witchcraft 7: Judgement Hour, Witchcraft IX: Bitter Flesh and the recent Over-sexed Rugsuckers from Mars.

If you’ve seen Fraternity Demon, the entire opening of that movie is cut from scenes from this movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Return to Horror High aired on USA Up All Night on August 25, 1990; June 28, 1991 and October 18, 1996.

Filmed at John Hughes Junior High School in Woodland Hills, and Clark Junior High School in Glendale, this not a sequel to Horror High was directed by Bill Froehlich, who wrote the script with Mark Lisson, Dana Escalante and Greg H. Sims.

Cosmic Pictures has arrived at Crippen High School to make a movie about a series of real-life unsolved murders. Producer Harry Sleerek (Alex Rocco) moves the cast and crew into the high school and starts filming with star Callie Cassidy (Lori Lethin, Bloody Birthday, The Prey). The movie plays with time as we also watch the movie’s writer, Arthur Lyman (Richard Brestoff) share the on-set murders with Chief Deyner (Pepper Martin) and Officer Tyler. While the bodies are recovered from the school, Chief Deyner and Officer Tyler (Maureen McCormick).

An actor named Oliver (George Clooney) drops out and after yelling at director Josh Forbes (Scott Jacoby), Oliver is murdered and soon replaced by Steven Blake (Brendan Hughes), another area cop as well as a former Crippen High student. The producers want more skin and gore, but the murders keep happening, like an extra, special effects artist Choo Choo (Panchito Gómez) and another actor, Richard Farley (Philip McKeon).

Steve and Callie get close and he shares the past of the school and the disappearance of his girlfriend at the time and how he thinks people are dying on set. Kind of like the scene where bio teacher  Richard Birnbaum (Vince Edwards) is dissected for real (which was cut down so this didn’t get an X rating). Then they find the bodies of the past massacre, all posed in a basement, 1982 massacre, before a janitor catches them. They reveal him to be Principal Kastleman (Andy Romano), who was jealous of Steve for dating Kathy. When he learned she was pregnant, he killed her and kept killing. Steve and Callie escape and end up throwing a javelin at the slasher administrator. But everyone killed in this movie is still alive and the cops end up shooting the still breathing Kastleman, who ends up being Arthur’s father.

It’s kind of all over the place, but there’s something interesting in this beyond it being George Clooney’s first movie role.

You can download the USA Up All Night episode on the Internet Archive or watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama was on USA Up All Night nine times: April 1, August 26 and December 1, 1989; June 1 and 2, 1990; February 2, September 13, and December 28, 1991 and February 7, 1992.

You know when they say that something is loosely based on something? I just read that this movie is loosely based on The Monkey’s Paw. Sure, they both have wishes that go wrong, but I think the similarities stop there.

Directed by David DeCoteau, who went on to bring us Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge, Puppet Master: Axis of Evil, Bigfoot vs. D.B. Cooper and the completely unhinged Eric Roberts-voiced A Talking Cat!?!, this movie delivers everything its title promises (which is a much better one than its original name, The Imp).

Three frat guys spy on three sorority girls (Babs, played by Robin Rochelle from Slumber Party Massacre; Rhonda and Frankie, who is Carla Baron, now a real-life psychic profiler) as they prepare two new members (Taffy is scream queen Brinke Stevens and Lisa, Michelle Bauer, the scream queen who was Penthouse Magazine’s July 1981 Pet of the Month and also known as adult star Pia Snow) for an initiation, which consists of paddling and whipped cream. The boys get caught and to make up for it, they have to go with the girls to steal a bowling trophy.

While they try and get said trophy, they run into a burglar named Spider (scream queen supreme Linnea Quigley), who helps them break in. They quickly screw up and break the trophy, freeing Uncle Impy. That wacky little guy promises three wishes for freeing him. One of the guys wants gold, Taffy wants to be prom queen and one of the dudes just wants to have sex with Lisa (well, you can see his point). Impy senses that the sorority girls are watching him (indeed, Babs’ dad runs the mall) via cameras and he possesses both of hem.

Hijinks, as they say, ensue, with human heads being used as bowling balls, sorority girls getting turned into demons, bowling ball-fu (as Jim Bob would say), all-knowing janitors, Molotov cocktails, more severed heads and so much more.

Most of the cast stuck around to be in another DeCoteau film, Nightmare Sisters. Both are very much Charles Band direct to video films — a bit of gore, a little comedy and some T & A. And they’re the only two movies that have all three of the major scream queens — Quigley, Stevens and Bauer — appear in the same movie together.

I mean, if you like demons, bowling and attractive women, this movie would have everything you’re looking for. You can watch this on Shudder and even get commentary by Joe Bob Briggs.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Prom Night III: The Last Kiss was on USA Up All Night on May 10 and 11, 1991 and February 20, 1993.

Oh Canada. You brought us the just alight Prom Night, the beyond great and why doesn’t everyone celebrate this movie like they do way more inferior films Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II and the not altogether bad Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil.

Notably, none of those movies relate to one another at all. So go figure, the one film in the series that I never watched ended up being the only actual sequel.

That said, the start of the film completely ignores everything we’ve learned before. Mary Lou, now played by Courtney Taylor instead of Lisa Schrage, has been in Hell since she died at a school dance in 1957. But she has a nail file and has been chipping away at the chains that bind her for decades, finally escaping back into our world. As she returns to Hamilton High School — totally in Canada, but overly American thanks to “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and flags a plenty and non-Canadian football — she starts off on the right foot by killing a janitor and using a jukebox to blast the pacemaker out of an old lover’s chest.

Speaking of those American flags, one night totally average high school student Alexander Grey leaves his girlfriend Sarah Monroe (Cynthia Preston, who is in another beyond wild Canadian film, Pin) behind as he soul searches about his total average-ness. He’s discovered by Mary Lou and after some two person push-ups on the stars and bars, he’s under her spell.

It works. His grades go up. He becomes a football hero. And he’s never had better sex ever.

So what’s wrong? Well, Mary Lou is killing everyone in his way.

Like the guidance counselor who doesn’t believe in our protagonist? She gets her face burned off with battery acid. His football rival gets a ball thrown through his stomach. And soon, even Alexander’s slacker best friend Shane gets his heart ripped out.

Alexander is conflicted. He loves his average girlfriend, but she’s already dumped him for a nerd. Well, a nerd who gets killed by AV equipment. And as we’ve already learned about Mary Lou, she will not be stopped when she wants something, even if her female rival has learned how to use a flamethrower.

Ron Oliver wrote the screenplays for the second and third films in this series (and directed this one). The original title was The Haunting of Hamilton High, as there was no plan to connect these to the Prom Night series. The money for this came from Live Entertainment. A few days before filming started, Oliver ended up going to dinner with the family that owned that company, only to learn on Monday that production had been delayed because the sons had killed their mom and dad. You know them as Erik and Lyle Menendez. Another Oliver fact: he and his partner were married by Udo Kier. One more? He wrote and directed several installments of the Nickelodeon show Are You Afraid of the Dark?

This can’t live up to the proceeding version, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t try. I’ve always loved that Mary Lou is the lone slasher who embraces sex and forces men to become the final survivor — but never lets them live.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Jack’s Back was on USA Up All Night on July 30, 1994 and May 12, 1995.

I’m kind of obsessed with young James Spader. Let’s face it, in movies like The New Kids and Tuff Turf he exuded either a coked-up menace or a hardscrabble heart that was hard to beat. Here, he plays two roles. First, he’s a young doctor who becomes a suspect in a series of Jack the Ripper copycat murders. But then he dies — and his twin brother may or may not be the true killer.

Written and directed by Pittsburgh native Rowdy Herrington (Roadhouse, Striking Distance), this film also stars Cynthia Gibb (the TV version of Fame), Jim Haynie (the dockmaster from The Fog), character actor Robert Picardo and Rod Loomis (Zed from The Beastmaster).

Herrington wanted the movie to be titled Red Rain and for the Peter Gabriel song to be in the film. However, this was his low budget debut, he couldn’t get the rights, so he had a song composed called “Red Harvest,” which sounds exactly like the Gabriel ditty. However, the studio felt that the title had nothing to do with the movie, so they renamed it.

The story isn’t any great shakes: the good twin has found one of the victims before becoming one himself, while the troubled brother becomes the prime suspect. It’s also one of those movies packed with red herrings and endings that aren’t endings. So it’s kinda sorta an American giallo — minus the black gloves, inventive camerawork, fashion and neon colors. But the story — where a protagonist is dragged into a situation that he must investigate himself — comes off that way. And despite all the things I’ve said above, I ended up enjoying this one.

Spader is great — he always is — and you have to wonder about Cynthia Gibb’s character. It seems weird for the same woman to be involved with two brothers, but I guess identical twins makes that a little easier, if no less creepy.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Think Big aired on USA Up All Night on January 22, April 17 and August 27, 1993 and January 22, 1994.

Rafe and Victor (Peter and David Paul) are truckers down on their luck, trying to keep their truck from going back to the bank. For their last chance, they’re sent with a load of toxic waste and put on a timer, on their way to a company called Tech Star that uses child labor. One of the precocious geniuses is Holly Sherwood (Ari Meyers, Emma Jean from Katie & Allie), who hides in their truck with her invention that can turn off and turn on anything electronic. This puts them at odds with Dr. Bruekner (Martin Mull), the CEO of Tech Star, who wants Holly and her invention.

Claudia Christian is in this as a doctor, as is Richard Kiel as a hired thug and yes, Richard Moll is in it too. I wish we had had a buddy comedy with both of them in it. Throw in Michael Winslow, David Carradine and Tiny Lister? Man, who cast this movie!

Jon Turteltaub went from making movies like this to 3 Ninjas, Cool Runnings and While You Were Sleeping to both National Treasure movies and The Meg. He wrote the script with Jon Turteltaub (Xtro II: The Second Encounter) and David Tausik. The story came from Jim Wynorski and R.J. Robertson (Forbidden World, Deathstalker II, Big Bad Mama II, Not of This Earth, Munchie, House IV and Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time).

Want more Barbarian Brothers? Check out this Letterboxd list.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Wild Malibu Weekend! aired on USA Up All Night on June 23 and December 2, 1995; August 23, 1996; February 8 and November 1, 1997.

Directed by Jason Williams, who played Flesh Gordon, this has The Ultramatics playing while in one long cut women spray whipped cream all over their breasts and play other supposedly sexy games with one another and look, it was the 90s, you know?

Let’s just discuss the cast.

Mary Johnson is played by Barbara Moore, who the Playboy 1992 Playmate of the Month, as well as a National Pro-Am dancing championship with dance partner Igor Suvorov and an NDCA Ballroom Dance instructor. Her sister in the movie, Kelly, is played by Kathy Pasmore who was in Takin’ It Off Out West. Shauna O’Brien may be the best known of the contestants. She was Lady Chatterley in Lady Chatterley’s Stories and was also Penthouse Pet of the Month in January 1992. If you watched a direct to VHS mature and not adult movie, you probably saw her in it.

Behind the camera, writer Gregory Poirier also scripted National Treasure: Book of Secrets, The Lion King II and the Jackie Chan movie The Spy Next Door. Yes, really. An even loftier career was found by executive producer Bob Murawski, who edited The Hurt Locker, Spider-Man and oh yeah, co-founded Grindhouse Releasing. As for this film’s editor, it was Paul Hart, who also edited Nude Bowling Part, a movie many in the crew worked on, as well as editing Gone With the Pope.

That said — this isn’t good unless you’re a teenager watching USA Up All Night.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Thirst aired on USA Up All Night on March 17, 1990 and March 30 and October 25, 1991.

What happens when you mix Soylent Green with Elizabeth Bathory and throw in the end of the world pre-millennial tension and madness that was 1979 in one movie? Then you get this Australian freakout, which I really want more film lovers to discover.

Director Rod Hardy had the literal balls to remake High Noon in 2000. He also made the Hasselhoff-starring Nick Fury movie, which is a really crazy directorial doubleshot, huh?

The Brotherhood has taken Kate Davis (Chantal Contouri) captive, as they feel that she could be a direct descendant of Elizabeth Bathory. They use fake silver fangs and brainwashing with hallucinogenic drugs — Henry Silva, being evil as always — to bring her into their fold, a practice that Dr. Fraser (David Hemmings, who made some awesome movies in Australia at this time, including the also-somewhat unknown Harlequin) does not agree with.

When she leaves, she thinks it was all a dream until she wakes up draining another woman of her blood. She’s trapped in a nightmare. I mean, did you see the tagline on the poster? “This woman is doomed to feel the awful, ancient hunger of the damned!”

There’s a crazy scene that double steals from Hitchcock, putting the shower scene from Psycho up against Marnie’s fear of the color red to create a blood shower that featured prominently in the film’s ads.

I love that this movie juxtaposes the clean metallic future that we in 1979 thought was coming, along with the dehumanization of mankind as cattle for the elite that couldn’t possibly ever come true. Right?

You can watch this on Tubi.