Tag Archives: 1988

USA UP ALL NIGHT: Glitch! (1988)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Glitch! was on USA Up All Night on May 3 and 4, and December 14, 1991; September 11, 1992, and March 27, 1993.

Julius Lazar (Dick Gautier) and his secretary, Missy (Amy Lyndon), have finished planning his next movie, Sex and Violence, when they decide to get away for the weekend and go to Hawaii. She has no idea what she’s doing, so that allows T.C. (Will Egan) and Bo (Steve Donmyer) to break in at the exact same time as two of Lazar’s disgruntled employees, Paco (Fernando Garzón) and Lee (John Kreng). Luckily, Bo has a second personality named Simon who is super strong — look, you’re watching a Nico Mastorakis movie, these are the plot twists you grow used to — and he’s able to defeat the two of them, setting T.C. up as Lazar and himself up as a director as young and morally unencumbered actresses show up to become famous in the next big movie from Hollywood’s most popular exploitation director.

If you’re looking for a movie just for nubile and often nude women, well, Mastorakis knew what you wanted. There are ninety women in this, including Bunty Bailey (Dolls, a-ha’s “Take On Me), Teri Weigel (one of the few women to be both a Playboy Playmate and Penthouse Pet, as well as an adult movie star), Roxanna Michaels (Caged Fury), Penny Wiggins (who was The Amazing Jonathan’s assistant Psychic Tanya), Marjean Holden (Sheeva from Mortal Kombat Annihilation), Christina Cardan (Chained Heat) as a non-SAG actress, Kahlena Marie (Streets of Death) as a SAG actress, stuntwoman Laura Albert, Heidi Paine (Wizards of the Demon Sword), Debra Lamb (both Stripped to Kill movies), Jesae (who became adult actress Elise di Medici), Becky Mullen (who was Sally the Farmer’s Daughter in GLOW and is also in the Van Halen video “Poundcake”) and Donna Spangler (Amityville Witches).

While all the women are trying to get a part, DuBois (Ted Lange) shows up with several members of the mob to reclaim the money Lazar took from them for his new movie, Pink Thunder. There’s also Michelle Wong (Julia Nickson, Rambo: First Blood Part II), who comes to audition just to tell Lazar how much she hates his movies and ends up becoming T.C.’s dream woman.

This has so many ridiculous scenes, including gay bodyguard ninja Brucie (Dan Spreaker) beating up an entire collection of bad guys and Bo getting his brains back from a hypnotist (Ji-Tu Cumbuka). None of it is politically correct; much of it is goofy. Mastorakis shot this because he was looking for somewhere fun to live. He stayed in the mansion where this was shot for three weeks.

CBS LATE MOVIE: Tank (1984)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Tank was on the CBS Late Movie on November 11, 1988.

Directed by Marvin J. Chomsky (Evel Knievel) and written by Dan Gordon (Rambo: Last Blood, Surf Ninjas), Tank has U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major Zack Carey (James Garner) just wanting to retire, despite the army trying to keep him enlisted. An older son had joined and died in training, which has put distance between Zack and his son Billy (C. Thomas Howell).

Zack owns a World War II tank, as one does, and he’s also a pretty good guy. One night at a bar, he watches Deputy Euclid Baker (James Cromwell) slap around a waitress named Sarah (Jenilee Harrison). We soon learn that he and Sheriff Cyrus Buelton (G.D. Spradlin) have been turning local girls into prostitutes. Zack goes against them, which ends up with his son being set up with drugs at school. Even when he offers them his life savings — his wife LaDonna (Shirley Jones) is not pleased — they keep screwed him and his family over.

So, as you’d hope, Zack takes his tank and smashes up the police station and a work camp. Taking his son’s lawyer with him, they make their way to Tennessee from Georgia in the hopes that they can get the evidence to the right people to clean up this town. He becomes a folk hero, and even bikers help him get over the state line.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Garfield: His Nine Lives (1988)

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June 23-29 Cat Week: Cats! They’re earth’s funniest creatures (sorry chimps, you’re psychos).

Based on the 1984 book, Jim Davis decided to show us all the past lives of Garfield — the one we know is life eight — and also depress us along the way. The book has Vikings, a dinosaur Odie and even a version where he goes primal and kills his elderly owner. On November 22, 1988, this CBS special adapted six of the stories from the book — “Babes and Bullets,” which is also from that book, was its own special — and added a few new stories.

Did you know Garfield was Handel’s cat and that he invented jazz? That he was a stunt cat for Krazy Kat and died when bricks crushed him? Or, if we’re to believe the last story, is Garfield Himself God?

This also has the saddest story ever, Diana’s Piano, all about a young girl who has a cat for her whole life, and it dies. Why is this in a child’s cartoon? Why did I put myself through it when I haven’t gotten past the loss of my best friend, Andy the cat?

However, we do learn how Odie once saved Garfield’s life and discover that someday, a very old Garfield will have children, so that’s kind of cool.

I know that Garfield is a very commercialized character, but I love him. Kennywood here in Pittsburgh used to have a dark ride — a water one, no less — that had Garfield in it, and everyone hated it. They hated it because it went on for years past, and no one cared about Garfield, and people wanted it to be the Old Mill again. Those people are losers. This was an entire ride where you were in Garfield’s head, and I would ride it again and again, yelling things out in Garfield’s voice. I loved it so much that the cover of my writer’s sample book was a picture of me waiting in line to ride it again. I love that Garfield hates human beings so much, that he despises Mondays, and that he loves human food. He is very much an honest cat, one that feels real. People love hi,m and he doesn’t need them.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: The Great Outdoors (1988)

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June 16-22 SNL Week: Saturday Night Live is celebrating 50 years on the air, can NBC last for another 50 years?

Howard Deutch directed two other films for John Hughes — who wrote this — Pretty In Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful. He also came from advertising before movies; he also directed the videos for “Flesh for Fantasy” by Billy Idol, Billy Joel’s “Keeping the Faith” and the movies Grumpier Old Men, The Odd Couple II, and a movie playing on cable right now as you read this, The Replacements. I also am forever jealous of him, as he’s married to Lea Thompson.

Chester “Chet” Ripley (John Candy) has brought his wife Connie (Stephanie Faracy) and son Buck (Chris Young), and Benny (Ian Giatti) is taking a break and heading off to their cabin in Pechoggin, Wisconsin. Chet doesn’t realize that he’s sharing it with his wife’s brother, Roman Craig (Dan Aykroyd), his wife Kate (Annette Bening) and their twin daughters Cara and Mara (Hilary and Rebecca Gordon). Chet hates Roman, who is always selling something, always has an angle and looks down on his working-class life. Why have hot dogs when you can have lobster? That’s how Roman looks at it.

This is a hijinks ensue movie. You don’t need to know much more of the plot other than you can turn this on during a lazy Sunday and your favorite part will be moments away, like The ’96er Steak Challenge, the legend of Jody the Bald-Headed Bear, the talking racoons and so much more. It’s dependable.

The funny thing is that the girls were almost abducted by a giant fish, which was built but didn’t work, so the bear was the substitute.

The audience first saw Roman, Chet and Buck in She’s Having a Babywhen they appeared in character trying to come up with a name for the titular child.

Chattanooga Film Festival 2025 Red Eye #2: Baoh the Visitor (1989), Call Me Tonight (1986) and Dragon’s Heaven (1988)

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A triple feature of anime in the middle of the night. What better way to spend the evening?

Baoh the Visitor (1989): This movie takes over a year of manga and makes it fit into a 45-minute  original video animation (OVA). Created by Studio Pierrot and distributed by Toho, this is an early release by Hirohiko Araki, who would go on to make JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

17-year-old Ikuro Hashizawa has been taken by Doress and given a parasitic worm which transforms him into BAOH (Biological Armament On Help), giving him incredible superpowers which will also kill him in 111 days when the worm eats his brain. RFK, eat your stupid heart out.

BAOH is trying to escape along with 9-year-old psychic Sumire and her marsupial, Sonny-Steffan Nottsuo. They are being watched by Dr. Kasuminome, who created — perhaps too well, as he says — BAOH, along with his assistant Sophine and an army of monsters, including Number 22, Colonel Dordo and Walken, a psychic killing machine who melts objects before they can reach him. He sees BAOH as a worthy target and even burns the sigil for the creature onto his chest like some deranged Dr. Manhattan.

Hideaki Anno, who co-directed Shin Godzilla, was an animator on this movie.

Call Me Tonight (1986): We’ve all been there before, right? Phone sex girl Natsumi Rumi decides to actually meet one of her callers, Sugiura Ryo. The problem? When he gets worked up, he turns into a monster. She tells him that she’s familiar with Freud and decides to work out his issues.

So yeah, an anime, My Demon Lover, but also one that has references to Fright Night. It also doesn’t skimp when it comes to the transformation parts, as each time it’s almost a totally different monster. For all the promise of tentacle sex that you would expect in this, it’s more about titillation, as Natsumi wants to keep teasing Sugiura until he can control his transformations. Then what? We never find out, as another girl — and some bikers — ruin everything.

Dragon’s Heaven (1988): In the year 3195, humans and robots have gone to war. During one of the battles, a sentient combat suit named Shaian loses its pilot and shuts down for a thousand years. His enemy, Elmedin, is still alive, but Shaian has found Ikuru, a junker, who joins him as his new partner.

Obviously, creator Makoto Kobayashi loves Moebius, as this looks like his art come to life. He was also a major name in Japan’s scratch-build model world, which means that in this, he decided to make human-sized versions of the robots and have them fight in a live-action opening to the film.

Since making this, Kobayashi has worked as a mechanical designer on Space Battleship Yamamoto 2199 and on everything from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure to Giant Robo, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam and Urotsukidôji: Legend of the Overfiend.

I’ve never seen anything look this gorgeous in an anime. Thanks to the Chattanooga Film Festival for introducing this to me!

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: 976-EVIL (1988)

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Spike and Hoax (Stephen Geoffreys from Fright Night) are cousins who live under the overly watchful eye of Hoax’s super religious mother, Lucy (Sandy Dennis, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, God Told Me To). They couldn’t be more different. Hoax is a nerd afraid of everyone, while Spike is a motorcycle-riding bad boy with the girl of his cousin’s dreams, Suzie (Lezlie Deane, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare).

Both boys start using the novelty phone number 976-EVIL, which reads them creepy-themed fortunes for a few dollars. The real truth is quite sinister: Satan uses the line to find people to give them what they want in exchange for their souls. There’s a great scene here where a religious investigator goes to the home of 976-EVIL, After Dark, Inc. There is room after room of people, Santas, phone sex women, and so much more, but in one dusty, cobwebbed closet lies the machine that powers this foul enterprise.

By the end of this movie, the cousins’ power dynamic has shifted, and the literal gateway to Hell appears in front of them. The way there is littered with ’80s clichés and a tone that is never sure if it fully wants to be comedic or horrific.

Still, this movie is not without its charms. The Deftones wrote the songs “Diamond Eyes” and “976-EVIL” about the film and it was popular enough to bring Spike back for the direct-to-video sequel 976-EVIL II: The Astral Factor. And England met his wife, set decorator Nancy Booth, while directing this movie. She would sneak R+N into the backgrounds of scenes that he would discover each day while watching the dailies. And hey, how many movies have uber religious old women get devoured by cats?

PS – There’s an entire chapter about this film in the book Satanic Panic: Pop Culture Paranoia in the 1980s that is must reading.

APRIL MOVIE THON 4: Fair Game (1988)

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April 26: Oh Giorgio! — Pick a movie with a Giorgio Moroder score. Here’s a list to get you started.

Also known as Mamba, this has video game designer Gene (Gregg Henry) get upset when Eva (Trudie Styler, soon to marry Sting) leaves him, so he injects hormones into a mamba to kill her.

Directed (and co-written with Lidia Ravera) by Mario Orfini, who also directed another Moroder-scored movie, Jackpot, this film also features Bill Moseley in the role of the man who sells the snake.

Then, in real time, we watch Eva get stalked by that mamba. Watch as she gets dressed and it slithers by. She takes a bath and there’s the snake. And then…it gets closer while she narrates everything in her brain. It’s no Venom.

It’s shot by Dante Spinotti, so it looks good. However, it doesn’t really go as hard as you want it to. That said, the Moroder score may make this worth watching.

You can watch this on Tubi.

April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama 2025 Primer: Brain Damage (1988)

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April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre in Vandergrift, PA on April 25 and 26, 2025. Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included). You can buy tickets at the show, but get there early and learn more here.

The features for Friday, April 25 are the first four A Nightmare On Elm Street movies.

Saturday, April 26 has Frankenhooker, Doom Asylum, Brain Damage and Basket Case 2.

Beyond being a historian of exploitation films, Frank Henenlotter has made some outright insane movies like Frankenhooker and Basket Case. What other kind of mad genius would hire horror host Zacherle to be a worm named Aylmer, who creates drug-like relationships with his hosts while demanding to eat the brains of everyone they love?

That blue phallic worm secretes a highly addictive hallucinogen directly into the brain, forcing Brian to leave behind his life, his girlfriend and any hope of normalcy, all while being pursued by the old couple that had imprisoned the parasite and who know way too much of his history, leading to some of the longest and most hilarious expository dialogue I’ve seen in a film.

During the fellatio scene — yes, a woman puts Aylmer inside her mouth — the crew walked out, refusing to work on the scene.

There’s a great moment where Duane and Belial from Basket Case meet Brian on a train before he ends up killing his girlfriend. I realize that’s a spoiler, but nothing can prepare you for this movie. It’s truly one of a kind.

You can watch this on Tubi or on Shudder with and without commentary by Joe Bob Briggs.

April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama 2025 Primer: Doom Asylum (1988)

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April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre in Vandergrift, PA on April 25 and 26, 2025. Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included). You can buy tickets at the show, but get there early and learn more here.

The features for Friday, April 25 are the first four A Nightmare On Elm Street movies.

Saturday, April 26 has Frankenhooker, Doom Asylum, Brain Damage and Basket Case 2.

You know how slashers go: you need to get the horny teens to wind up in a secluded place with some promise of sex and drug hijinks. An abandoned mental hospital? That’s not frightening — it’s a good place to screw!

Of course, inside the walls of this old asylum, there’s more than just a place to party hearty. There’s also a deformed maniac who just so happens to be the attorney that split final girl Kiki’s parents up and caused her mother to die a decade before. Again, in slashers, there are no coincidences. Everything has been ordained, as if by freakish fate.

Now, the former Attorney Mitch Hansen has become The Coroner, a serial killer who uses surgical tools to wipe out anyone in his way.

The dual roles of Kiki and her mother Judy are played by Patty Mullen, Penthouse Pet of the Month for August 1986 and 1988’s Pet of the Year. You may also remember her from playing the title role in Frankenhooker and being married to Joey Image, one of the drummers for The Misfits.

However, Jane — one of the many friends of Kiki set up to die, as is the wont of the slasher — would grow up to be Kristen Davis. Yes, from Sex and the City. So if you ever wanted to see her get her face sawed off…

There’s also a punk band played inside the asylum named Tina and the Tots. Tina is played by Ruth Collins, who was also in Witch Academy and was paid $100 extra to show her breasts. Because you know, you can’t have a slasher without them (actually you totally can).

This was all written by Rick Marx, who also was behind the movies Taboo American Style 1: The Ruthless Beginning, Wanda Whips Wall Street, Blonde Justice #3 and Christy In the Wild. In case you didn’t guess, those are all adult films. He also wrote Snapped for Chuck Vincent, Warrior Queen, a biography on WOR late-night fixture Joe Franklin and the two Gor movies.

Behind the camera? None other than Richard Friedman (Scared Stiff, Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge). This movie is all over the place in tone and presentation, but if you rented it back in the late 1980s- it’s pretty much a perfectly goofball slasher that would go well with a six-pack and pizza- you probably have much fonder memories than I do. After all, if you went and watched Bloodsucking Freaks without seeing it through the lens of being 15 years old and landlocked in a small town, you probably wouldn’t understand why people liked it either.

You can get this on Blu-ray from the fine folks at Arrow Video or watch it for free on Tubi!

April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama 2025 Primer: A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

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April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre in Vandergrift, PA on April 25 and 26, 2025. Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included). You can buy tickets at the show, but get there early and learn more here.

The features for Friday, April 25 are the first four A Nightmare On Elm Street movies.

Saturday, April 26 has Frankenhooker, Doom Asylum, Brain Damage and Basket Case 2.

I’ve often written off all of these films after the first three—one being the originator, two being a strange metaphor for growing up gay, and the third being a bravura Dokken soundtrack sporting a thrill ride that was amongst the first slasher films I ever watched.

Part four is slick and as commercial as it gets, but isn’t that what you want? Aren’t we all wistful for the movie theaters of thirty years ago, when films like Bad Dreams, the Chuck Russell remake of The Blob, Child’s Play, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Fright Night II, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Phantasm II, Poltergeist 3, Pumpkinhead and so many more graced the silver screen? This is a movie made for teenagers to devour in the same way that they chow down through a pizza — more on that in a bit.

After the final battle in the last film in this series, Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Wes Craven intended to end the franchise. With the original protagonist, Nancy, sacrificing herself to stop Krueger, the rest of the Dream Warriors have been released from the insane asylum and are back to being normal teenagers.

However, Kristen (Tuesday Knight, replacing Patricia Arquette) believes that Freddy isn’t dead, drawing Joey, Kincaid and Kincaid’s dog Jason into her dream, where they show her that Freddy’s boiler is cold. There’s been a rift between these former friends, as the boys are seen as freaks and Kristen has joined the popular crowd with her martial arts practicing boyfriend Rick (Andras Jones, Sorority Girls in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama), Alice, Sheila and Debbie.

Soon, Kincaid has been killed in the junkyard from Dream Warriors, where Freddy comes back after a dog pisses fire onto him. Yes, that really happens. Then, Joey finds a naked girl swimming in his waterbed in a sequence that’s glossy, ridiculous and awesome all in equal measure. He’s soon dead and Kristen passes out when she finds out, bringing Freddy after her. She swears to get revenge, but once her mother gives her sleeping pills to ensure that she gets rest, she is felled by the “Bastard Son of a One Hundred Maniacs.” However, she is able to give her dream power to Alice which she’s gonna need because with each kill, Freddy gains the abilities and personalities of Alice’s dead friends.

Sure, these movies would get much worse, but if you’re looking for a film that’ll make the middle of the night just fly past, you can’t go wrong with this one. I was surprised how much I liked it, which is kind of the point of this challenge, right?

This movie is filled with plenty of out-there kill scenes and flip dialogue that finally makes Freddy the actual hero of the film. There’s a girl who gets turned into a cockroach and smashed into a Roach Motel. Then, there’s the scene where Freddy shows Alice all of his victims on a “soul pizza” that must be seen to be believed.

Say what you will about Renny Harlin, but in this follow up to his American debut Prison, he really takes the series all the way into the surreal, basing each of the murders on actual nightmares that he had, as well as crazy moments that push the film into meta territory when Alice goes from a movie theater into an actual movie while the rest of the cast watches.

This was the highest grossing movie in the series until Freddy vs. Jason, which it earns with an all-star team of special effects artists, a soundtrack boasting bands like the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, Blondie, and the Fat Boys, and an ending that boasts a twenty foot tall practical model of Freddy being destroyed by the souls of those he has taken.

For even more fun, here’s a video from fast food lovers The Fat Boys that features them getting Freddy’s house as an inheritance and having to spend the night there.