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: 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: 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: Fireballs was on USA Up All Night on January 15 and September 10, 1994 and August 14, 1995. Firehouse was on May 8 and December 31, 1992. On July 23, 1993, this was a USA Up All Night double feature.

Fireballs (1989): Canada made the move in the late 1980s from slashers to sex comedies, so it seemed. This next Police Academy ripoff concerns firefighters and was filmed days after a very similar 80’s sex on the job comedy, Recruits.

Writer, producer and star Mike Strapko — along with his brother and an actor named Goran Kalezic — were production assistants on that Wassanga Beach shot, Charlie Wiener-directed film.

Wiener made a TV movie called Blue Murder and Dragon Hunt in addition to this movie (he also wrote Screwball Hotel), so let me assure you — his scumbag skills are in full effect here.

We meet our heroes — such as they are — Sam (Kalezic), Keith (Eric Crabb) and Baduski (Strapko) as they leave the beach to fight a fire, which really ends up being a surprise party for the firefighting parrot Fireballs, who loves beer and breasts.

I really think I might never have to write again after that sentence.

The movie then becomes Gung Ho, as Japanese business owner Mr. Matsuro wants to bring his company to town, but thinks that the fire department can’t handle things. He wants to bring in his own team of Japanese firefighting experts.

Can you believe I just wrote that?

Strapko was supposedly an actual firefighter, so one would assume he’d want to make the profession look more heroic than this. Actually, scratch that. He just wanted to see as many breasts as possible, much like the character he’s playing, which is really more John Belushi cosplay than anything.

This movie is my kind of film. It’s neither sexy nor funny, so the more that it attempts either, it actually becomes more of the latter. For example, the idea of a bird that is dubbed to sound like it’s swearing is mildly fine the first time, becomes grating and then annoying before becoming incoherently amazing. This is the kind of movie that demands to be watched with an entire table full of mind-altering substances and a group of people who refuse to judge it and instead demand that it get worse so that it gets better.

Firehouse (1987): When someone asks, “What was Julia Roberts’ first movie?” you can tell them it was as Babs in the 1987 sex comedy Firehouse, despite her not appearing in the credits. She’d have to wait until the next year and Satisfaction to see her name up on the screen.

This was made by J. Christian Ingvordsen, who would eventually go full auteur and write, direct and star in Blue Vengeance. Here, however, he’s made a film about some young ladies who have to deal with the seamier side of firefighting and convince the boys that they can make it.

Take it from someone who watched but this and Fireballs. They’re both horrible, but at least that one has a talking bird and aggressively tries to be so bad. This one just…is. We never got the sequel Firehouse: The 2nd Alarm.

One of the writers was Rick Marx who also wrote Gor, Outlaw of Gor, Dragonard, Platoon Leader, Doom Asylum, Tenement, Wanda Whips Wall Street and adult films with titles like Taboo American Style: The Ruthless Beginning, Vagablonde and Sex World Girls as well as Chuck Vincent’s Roommates, Slammer Girls and Warrior Queen.

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.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mankillers aired on USA Up All Night on October 14, 1989; March 24, August 31 and December 8, 1990; April 5, July 6 and November 22, 1991; February 29 and October 23, 1992; June 19, 1993; March 18, October 22 and November 12, 1994 and May 19 and September 2, 1995.

Shot back to back with Deadly Prey by director and writer David A. Prior, this was originally titled 12 Wild Women.

CIA agent Rachael McKenna (Lynda Aldon, The Wizard of Speed and Time) is hunting down a criminal who goes by John Mickland (William Zipp) who is into drugs, murder and white slavery. To get him, she goes to a prison and releases a dozen of the most dangerous women in there. So, you know, Hell Squad. Or The Dirty Dozen. There’s a thin line between love and hate because McKenna and Mickland used to be in love before he left her for dead.

Why she thinks women would be better for her soldiers is never explained. But who cares? We get a training sequence with Edy Williams whipping these raw recruits into shape. The main girls are Maria Rosetti (Christine Lunde, Young Rebels, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death), Terry Davis (Suzanne Tegmann, Terror In Beverly Hills), Roxanne Taylor (Marilyn Stafford), Vicki Thompson (Thyais Walsh), Christine Rollins (Bainbridge Scott, who is also in the similar Hell Squad and Prior’s Death Chase) and Trish Daniels (Cyndi Domino). It just takes a day of boot camp — I mean, Williams is very motivating — and they’re ready for war.

The end of this movie is one big battle and just about everyone dies. including one gentleman who gets stabbed right in the dick. There are also grenades, so many guns that even the NRA may be like “Hey ladies, do we need so many weapons?” and Zipp taking ten full minutes to die.

I learned from this movie that all female prisoners are attractive and they all get to wear cutoffs in the big house. I think it’s learnings like this that put me ahead of the average man on the street. Mankillers is the kind of movie I can’t defend, the sort of film that’s always on when my wife walks in, shakes her head and just looks at me like some kind of manchild. There’s an endless fascination with women murdering horrible men with an arsenal of death spitting devices and try as I may to grow up and take my real world values into my movie watching mind, I can’t. Shoot everyone. Stab everyone in the dick. Wear headbands. Make that hair high.

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: 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: Student Affairs aired on USA Up All Night on November 1, 1996 and September 20, 1997.

Directed by Chuck Vincent, who co-wrote the script with Craig Horrall, Student Affairs is about the making of a movie with the same name, so any write-up that says that this is a 50s movie like Porky’s is missing that part of the overall story.

It’s also got a pretty strong cast playing the cast within, well, a cast. Louie Bonanno, Jim Abele and Beth Broderick are joined by adult stars Tracey Adams and Veronica Hart — who always has great roles in Vincent’s movies — to play the young and hopefuls. I like that Vincent always found roles for adult actors and didn’t just have them playing nude extras. Adams also shows up in The Lost Empire and Vincent’s Wimps (as does Bonanno and Hart). As for Ms. Hart, you can find her in plenty of mainstream movies — often under the name Jane Hamilton — like Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh, Bedroom Eyes II and many, many more. At 67 years of age as of this writing, she’s still showing up in non-sex roles in several adult films to this day.

The director of the movie in this movie, Ron Sullivan, is really Henri Pachard, who knows a thing or two about directing. He made over 360 adult films in his career. And the character of Mr. Evans is David F. Friedman, who partnered to make several nudie cuties with Herschell Gordon Lewis like The Adventures of Lucky Pierre and Goldilocks and the Three Bares before pretty much inventing the roughie with Scum of the Earth and the gore movie with Blood Feast, Color Me Blood Red and Two Thousand Maniacs!, again along with Lewis. He also produced, co-wrote and even acted in movies like A Smell of Honey, a Swallow of Brine and The Erotic Adventures of Zorro. As hardcore overtook the adult film, he left the industry, coming back in the early 2000s to work with Lewis again.

You can watch this on YouTube.