EDITOR’S NOTE: Footloose was on USA Up All Night on September 15 and December 23, 1995.

Herbert Ross (The Owl and the Pussycat, Steel Magnolias) is directing, Dean Pitchford (the co-writer of “You Should Hear How She Talks About You”) is writing, and America is loving it. Imagine — a town where no music is allowed. How can it be! How could a lack of the First Amendment ever happen in our country?

Ren McCormack (Kevin Bacon) and his mother Ethel (Frances Lee McCain) have come from Chicago to Bomont, Utah. Here, Reverend Shaw Moore (John Lithgow) runs the town, keeping kids like Willard (Chris Penn), Rusty (Sarah Jessica Parker), Woody (John Laughlin), Lulu (Lynne Marta) and his own daughter Ariel (Lori Singer) from dancing.

Ariel’s brother died after a night of drinking and dancing, which is how we got here. So can this city kid come to town and change it all? Of course.

This was almost a Michael Cimino movie, but even after Heaven’s Gate, he had considerable demands. There’s also a world where Tom Cruise or Christopher Atkins was the lead, while Madonna, Haviland Morris, Valerie Bertinelli or Jennifer Jason Leigh would be the love interest.

This is loosely based on a real-life movie story. The town of Elmore City, Oklahoma, had no dancing since its founding. Rev. F. R. Johnson said, “No good has ever come from a dance. If you have a dance, somebody will crash it, and they’ll be looking for only two things — women and booze. When boys and girls hold each other, they get sexually aroused. You can believe what you want, but one thing leads to another.” In 1980, the students of Elmore City’s high school made national news when they requested permission to hold a junior prom. The school board was tied at 2–2 when President Raymond Lee said, “Let ’em dance.”

If you were alive when this came out — I was 12 — you know the songs: “Footloose” by Kenny Loggins, “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” by Deniece Williams, “Almost Paradise” by Heart’s Ann Wilson and Loverboy’s Mike Reno, “Holding Out for a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler, and so many more. Writer Dean Pitchford did more than the script. He also co-wrote the songs.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Deathstalker II was on USA Up All Night on March 11, 1994 and November 18, 1995.

John Terlesky replaces Rick Hill as the Deathstalker and he doesn’t really have the look that Boris Vallejo envisions on the box art for this one. And because Jim Wynorski is directing, you know you’re going to get exactly what you expect out of a sword and sorcery Roger Corman movie: breasts, boobs, bazooms and a few beasts. Maybe some blood if you’re lucky. And perhaps some more sweater meat.

Princess Evie of Jzafir (Monique Gabrielle, Penthouse Pet of the Year for December 1982) has been taken away from her rightful throne by Jarek (John LaZar, Z-Man from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls!) and Sultana (Toni Naples, who shows up in Chopping Mall and Sorceress) and replaced by a clone.

So Evie takes on the secret identity of Reena the Seer and hires Deathstalker to get her kingdom back. They have plenty of adventures — yay! — and maybe even fall in love — aww! — before the end of the film.

Look for Queen Kong from GLOW as the Amazon champion Gorgo in a wrestling scene, if you enjoy that sort of thing.

Is Deathstalker II better than the original? No. It’s pretty stupid. But isn’t that what you’re really coming to these movies for? It’s definitely entertaining and a great escape from reality, though.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cheerleader Camp was on USA Up All Night on February 28 and September 12, 1992; May 15, October 15, November 19 and December 10, 1993; May 7, December 9 and 30, 1994; January 4 and July 18, 1997.

You know, if I had my way, Betsy Russell would have been a much bigger star. I mean, she’s done well and is remembered — and got to be in the Saw movies and get a whole new audience — but she deserved better than a movie that forces us to watch Leif Garrett make sweet love to Playboy Playmate for April 1986 and adult star Teri Weigel. Nothing against Teri — she’s also in Predator 2, Marked for Death, Innocent Blood and was the first Playboy girl to go into adult, which cost her a lot in her personal and professional life.

Making this movie work even harder for me? The appearance of Cannon Films star — I mean, she was in Breakin’, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo and Ninja 3: The Domination — Lucinda Dickey. Also — Taleena from the Gor movies — and June 1986 Playmate of the Month — Rebecca Ferratti, George “Buck” Flower and Tom Habeeb, who would one day host the show Cheaters.

Based on the death of Kirsten Costas — just like the original Tori Spelling Lifetime movie Death of a Cheerleader — this movie is a paper-thin slasher that came in seven years after its expiration date and led to a sequel that’s not a sequel, the Russell feature — and yes, Buck Flower shows up again — Camp Fear.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Can’t Buy Me Love was on USA Up All Night on May 29 and December 25, 1992; December 25, 1993; October 6, 1995; July 6 and November 22, 1996.

I cut grass from 15 to 25 years old, and that’s how I put myself through college and even made extra money once I started my advertising career. I certainly would not have used the money I made to save for a telescope or to date the popular girl in school like Ronald Miller (Patrick Dempsey).

The girl next door of his dreams, cheerleader Cindy Mancini (Amanda Peterson, whose career and life didn’t go as brightly as this movie would seem to make me think that they would), has wrecked her mother’s new suede dress, so she agrees to be his girlfriend for a month for the sum of $1,000.

This is the kind of movie that makes me hate the second act of the three-act structure. Ronald gets popular, gets rid of his old friends and even turns on Cindy. She thought they were in love, and he probably did as well, but no one knows how to connect. He’s already hanging out with her friends instead of Malachi and Seth Green, but isn’t that the way these things always go.

Director Steve Rash started his career making movies like The Buddy Holly Story and Under the Rainbow, and now makes direct-to-video sequels to the American Pie, Road Trip and Bring It On films.

So yeah. In the 80s, a tender romantic comedy about making young women into prostitutes was the kind of thing we saw as romance. Weird, huh?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Andy Warhol’s Dracula was on USA Up All Night on October 13, 1989 and July 13, 1990.

Also known as Blood for Dracula, this was written and directed by Paul Morrissey, despite the fact that some prints had director Antonio Margheriti listed.

A day after the principal shooting for Flesh for Frankenstein ended, Morrissey had Udo Kier, Joe Dallesandro and Arno Juerging get shorter haircuts and start filming. You can spot several directors in this film, like Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves) and Roman Polanski.

The Dracula in this film (Udo Kier) is not the romantic master of women. Instead, he’s sick for most of the film, whining about his lot in life and the fact that there just aren’t many virgin women left. His familiar, Anton (Arno Juerging), has brought him to Italy in the hopes that a more religious country will have more virgins, as they are the only food that vampires can eat outside of a vegetarian diet.

Il Marchese di Fiore (de Sica) believes that one of his four daughters would be perfect to marry Dracula. However, he doesn’t realize that two of them, S. Still, he(Dominique Darel) and Rubinia (Stefania Casini, Suspiria), have been deflowered by the Marxist handyman Mario (Dallesandro). Dracula soon learns that they are not pure by drinking their blood. While he is weakened, he is able to make them into his slaves.

Dracula does succeed in drinking. The virginal plasma of the plain eldest daughter, Esmerelda (Milena Vukotic), but not the youngest, Perla (Silvia Dionisio, Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man).

That’s because Mario assaults her to destroy her virginity, which is somehow trying to be protective.

Throughout this film, the noble traditions of the past are undone by the common man, much less the modern man. You can ascribe artifice to that or just realize that Dallesandro was not doing an accent, no matter what, and you got what you got. This is somewhat similar to how the movie featuresAndy Warhol’s name, leading people to wonder what role he played in its creation

He answered, “I go to the parties.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein was on USA Up All Night on May 12 and July 13, 1990.

Joe Dallesandro is one of those nexus points for so many movies and parts of culture that I love. Born to a Navy man and a mother who was serving fifteen years in a federal pen for auto theft by the time he was five, Joe went from foster homes to knocking out his high school principal and stealing cars just like his mom. He got shot in the leg, and when his dad took him to the hospital, the cops arrested the fifteen-year-old and sent him to the Catskills, specifically the Camp Cass Rehabilitation Center. He escaped within a few months and made it back to New York City, where he went from nude modeling to being the star of Warhol’s films.

After roles in Lonesome Cowboys, Trash, Heat, and Warhol’s two monster films, Joe decided to stay in Europe, where he made a wide range of movies across various genres that I love. Yeah, there’s the American The Gardener, Serge Gainsbourg’s Je t’aime moi non plus, Savage Three, Killer Nun, Madness, Le Marge with Sylvia Kristel and many more. He even shows up somehow in Theodore Rex. Yes, the same man whose bulge is on the front of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, and the cover of The Smiths’ first album, was in a movie about dinosaur cops.

This is the movie that Joe, who never once gave it away, came to Italy to make with Paul Morrissey.

Baron von Frankenstein (Udo Kier) has made his sister Katrin his wife, yet ignores her as he works to create the perfect human being, going through corpses of men and women to craft his Serbian ideal. You know, when he isn’t literally having sex with the body parts of dead women while shouting, “To know death, Otto, you have to fuck life… in the gall bladder!”

He wants Nicholas (Dallesandro) to be the body of his creature, but he escapes and makes his way to the castle, where he begins to satisfy the Baroness. Once she reveals the fact that she only cares about herself, she betrays him and, in return, is given what she really wants: The opportunity to have sex with the Baron’s creation, who responds by loving her to death. Another even more graphic scene happens when lab assistant Otto literally screws the guts out of the female monster (Dalila Di Lazzaro, Phenomena), causing the angry Dr. Frankenstein to kill him.

I kind of dig that the end of this film echoes both A Bay of Blood and Manson’s quote about “These children that come at you with knives — they are your children” by having the Frankenstein children holding scalpels that they will either use to help or to hurt. The movie doesn’t tell you what happens next.

That A Bay of Blood comparison is easier to make when you realize that one of the kids is played by one of the adorable and murderous kids from that movie, Nicoletta Elmi. In the 70s, if you wanted a frightening Italian red-headed child, you went with Nicoletta, who also appeared in Baron Blood, Who Saw Her Die?, Deep Red and many more. She also played the redhead usher in Demons when she grew up.

Despite his name appearing in this film, Andy Warhol’s contributions were minimal. He may have visited the set once and briefly examined the editing. Perhaps a more involved talent was Antonio Margheriti—Anthony Dawson—who claimed to have directed some of the film. He may have just been there so that the film could claim to be Italian, as it would need a director from the country to obtain Italian nationality for the producers.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Big Top Pee-Wee was on USA Up All Night on June 26, 1993; March 31, 1995, and February 10, 1996. 

Everyone talks about Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, but nobody talks about this movie. I mean, it has Susan Tyrell — yes, from Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker and Forbidden Zone — as a miniature woman who is married to Kris Kristofferson. Why is nobody talking about this?

It’s also directed by Randal Kleiser (Grease, The Blue Lagoon) and produced by Debra Hill, two people who I would also never think would have anything to do with a Pee Wee Herman movie. Sadly, this was the second and last of what could have been an entire series of these films.

It’s also the debut of Benicio Del Toro, so why should any of these people make sense?

The idea of the film was that Pee Wee had become famous, due to the James Brolin and Morgan Fairchild film made from his last movie, and now he is a Frank Sinatra-esque singer. Then, fame became a cruel beast, and Pee Wee went away to live as a farmer. This is never explained other than as an odd dream sequence, which is, I assume, all that remains.

Pee Wee and Vance the Pig (played by Wayne White, who helped with Pee-wee’s Playhouse and art directed the videos for Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” and the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight) were once content to make giant plants and romance a schoolteacher (Penelope Ann Miller) before the storm brings a carnival led by Mace Montana (Kristofferson).

Soon, our man — or boy — has fallen for Gina Piccolapupula (Valeria Golino), a trapeze artist who inspires him to pursue a career in the circus. When the town says no, Pee Wee uses a hot dog tree to turn them into children and…well, that’s the whole movie.

The montage when Pee Wee and Gina finally make love is something that still makes me laugh to this day. This is so much stranger than the first film, while seeming normal, yet it has less of the whimsy of Tim Burton, so that hurts it.

Lynne Marie Stewart — Ms. Yvonne! — is a bearded lady, the one-time Henry and Predator Kevin Peter Hall shows up as a tall man (what else could he be?), Matthias Hues is a lion tamer, former Bozo Vance Colvig is a clown (and he was also in Mortuary Academy), Terrence Mann (Ug from Critters) is another clown, Franco Columbu (Arnold’s best man when he married Maria Shriver) is a strongman, Michu Meszaros (Hans from Waxwork and the man who played ALF) is a small person, Jay Robinson (Dr. Shrinker!) plays Cook, Kenneth Tobey (who shows up in plenty of Joe Dante films) is the sheriff, Leo Gordon (the Evil One in Saturday the 14th Strikes Back) plays the blacksmith, Frances Bay (Happy Gilmore‘s grandmother, plus Aunt Barbara in Blue Velvet) is Mrs. Haynes and former movie and kid host Jack Murdock is Otis.

You have to love that Pee Wee followed up his most significant career success with a movie about the circus filled with character actors. Of course, this made nowhere near its budget, and that brings us back to today. No one ever talks about this movie. They should.