EDITOR’S NOTE: Puppet Master was on USA Up All Night on January 30, 1993.

Puppet Master may have started with one direct-to-video movie, but since then, there have been ten sequels, a crossover with Demonic Toys and a recent reboot, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich.

After Empire Pictures went out of business, Charles Band started Full Moon Productions, which would partner with Paramount Pictures and Pioneer Home Entertainment to create direct-to-video movies. Puppet Master would be first and it’s very similar to another Band movie, Dolls. Yes, this was initially intended for theaters, but Band thought it would make more money as a home release.

Think Star Wars is confusing? Well, Puppet Master is really the sixth film in chronological order. It starts in Bodega Bay, California, in the year 1939. A puppeteer named André Toulon (William Hickey, Uncle Lewis from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) is finishing a puppet he calls Jester when Nazi spies come for him. He places Jester and the other puppets (Blade, Shredder Khan and Gengie) into a hidden panel before killing himself.

Fifty years later, psychics Alex Whitaker, Dana Hadley, Frank Forrester and Carissa Stamford take a journey to meet their old colleague Neil Gallagher, who has found Toulon’s hiding place, all thanks to a series of visions. Soon, a doll named Pinhead is taking out the psychics one by one, finally revealing that Neil has been alive all along, using Toulon’s Egyptian secrets of alchemy to reanimate himself. However, he’s dumb enough to cross the puppets and throw Jester at a chair. Those puppets stay together. Only Alex and Megan survive, along with Dana’s formerly taxidermied dog, which is now mysteriously back alive.

Such a small debut for a series that would go on to so many more installments, right? Even though they only have five minutes of screen time, people fell in love with the little guys. How can’t you adore Blade, who is based on Klaus Kinski and the Leech Woman? Strangely enough, most of the music in this movie comes from a film Band produced that’s also about bringing inanimate objects to life, Tourist Trap.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Going Overboard was on USA Up All Night on June 15 and 16, 1990; February 16 and October 11, 1991; March 13 and June 12, 1992 as Babes Ahony. 

It seemed like every time I tuned into USA Up All Night, this movie — Going Overboard is its primary title, but it was also known as Adam Sandler’s Love Boat in Germany — was playing. This is understandable since it was one of Adam Sandler’s early films that could be aired without incurring significant costs.

Directed and written by Valerie Breiman, the film boasts a large cast, including Burt Young, Billy Zane, Adam Rifkin, Terry Moore, Milton Berle, and Billy Bob Thornton.

The plot follows Shecky Moskowitz (played by Sandler), a stand-up comedian who isn’t very good at his craft. He lands a gig on a cruise ship as a janitor but gets a stand-up job after the on-ship comedian, Dickie Diamond (Scott LaRose), falls overboard. Complications arise when General Noriega (Burt Young) decides he wants to kill Miss Australia (Lisa Collins) for insulting him. Fortunately, Billy Zane appears as Lord Neptune to inspire our hero. Yes, that really happens.

The film was shot on a small, rundown cruise ship that sailed for a week from New Orleans to Cancun, Mexico. It was en route to the Miss Universe Pageant, hosting fifty past and present beauty queens from across the United States. As much as I appreciate Sandler, this is one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and you can imagine how low that bar goes.

It’s rumored that Rifkin co-wrote this film. Yes, the same person responsible for The Dark Backward. Really. Honestly, I have no idea how this film came to be, nor can I explain why I’ve watched it so many times. Somehow, Sandler recovered and has been a huge success. Anything can happen, you know?

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Back to the Future Part II was on USA Up All Night on January 16, 1998.

According to Wikipedia: “Director Robert Zemeckis said that initially, a sequel was not planned for the first film, but its huge box office success led to the conception of a second installment. He later agreed to do a sequel, but only if Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd returned as well.”

That’s BS. The sequel was set up at the end of the first movie!

Most of the original cast agreed to return, but a major stumbling block arose when negotiating Crispin Glover’s fee to come back as George McFly. When it became clear that he would not return, the role was rewritten so that George is dead in 1985, and reused footage and an actor in make-up would fill in. We’ll get back to that.

It took two years to build the set, and this film and the third movie were shot at the same time (or at least worked on simultaneously).

Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) comes back to get Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and his girlfriend Jennifer (Elisabeth Shue) in an attempt to fix the future. If Marty Jr. (also Fox) is allowed to be part of a crime with Griff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), things will go wrong for the entire family. The problem is that as they fix this, Bigg (also Wilson) steals a sports almanac and becomes Donald Trump, taking over the world, killing Marty’s father, George, and marrying his mom, Lorraine (Lea Thimpson).

This gets dark. Super dark. But just when it seems like everything has worked out back in 1955 — everything is repeated — the DeLorean disappears. It looks like all is lost when, in one of my favorite scenes, Joe Flaherty appears as a Western Union man, having had a telegram for decades to give to Marty at this exact moment. Marty goes back to see Doc Brown, having just left, all to set up the last movie.

Back to Glover.

According to an interview with Howard Stern, the highest offer he got was for $125,000, less than half of what the other returning cast members were paid. The actor felt that the movie’s message was incorrect. The characters were successful at the end of the film because of money, not love.

Zemeckis went beyond using old scenes to shoot new footage of actor Jeffrey Weissman, who wore prosthetics including a false chin, nose, and cheekbones. Weissman would tell Glover that the molds that were created from his face to make the aging prosthetics in the first film were reused to make the prosthetics for Weissman. Glover filed a lawsuit against the producers as they neither owned his likeness nor had permission to use it. Today, thanks to Glover, Screen Actors Guild collective bargaining agreements stipulate that producers and actors are prohibited from using such methods to reproduce the likeness of other actors. The precedent he set is being upheld in the digital aagee as well

Glover wasn’t the only actor not to return. Claudia Wells, who played Marty’s girlfriend Jennifer, was dealing with her mother’s cancer. She was replaced by Elisabeth Shue and even erased from past footage shown in the film.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Uncle Buck was on USA Up All Night on January 2, 1998.

Directed and written by John Hughes, the first film of his deal with Universal, this has Bob and Cindy Russell (Garrett M. Brown and Elaine Bromka) called away by a medical emergency and Bob’s brother Buck (John Candy) being placed in charge of their kids, Tia (Jean Louisa Kelly), Maizy (Gaby Hoffman) and Miles (Macaulay Culkin). They’re worried, because all Buck really does is smoke, drink and gamble. Yet as you can imagine, he learns about why family is important while improving their lives (and fixing his relationship with Chanice (Amy Madigan)).

But really, it’s a whole movie to remind you why you loved John Candy so much.

Culkin remembered and told People Magazine, “I think he always had that really great instinct. I think he saw. Listen, even before the wave crested and the Home Alone stuff was happening, it was not hard to see how difficult my father was. It was no secret. He was already a monster.

Candy would ask, “Is everything alright over there? Are you doing well? Good day? Everything’s alright? Everything good at home?”

It’s important that I remember that. I remember John caring when not a lot of people did.”

Sometimes, I get a bit choked up thinking about him, and I never really knew him. I know it’s weird, but that’s how it is.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Major League was on USA Up All Night on January 9, 1998.

David S. Ward wrote The Sting and Sleepless In Seattle, which makes me rethink that this is just a silly movie and made by people who maybe loved the game. He also directed King Ralph, Down Periscope and the sequel to this.

Rachel Phelps (Margaret Whitton) is a Vegas showgirl who came to Cleveland with the rich man she married. He dies, she’s stuck here with the team, but if they play poorly, she can move them anywhere. So she makes the Indians the worst team in baseball, yet one that comes together to become winners.

A few years ago, I wrote “Ten players on my movie All-Star team (yes, including the DH)” and pitcher Ricky Vaughn (Charlie Sheen), third baseman Roger Dorn (Corbin Bernsen), Center Fielder Willie “Mays” Hayes (Wesley Snipes), Manager Lou Brown (James Gammon), Clu Haywood (real life pitcher Pete Vuckovich), Right Fielder Pedro Cerrano (Dennis Haysbert, before he was the President) and Catcher Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger) all made the team.

I can’t believe I got this far before saying that the general manager of the team, Charlie Donovan, is Charles Cyphers, Sheriff Lee Brackett. And hey, Rene Russo is in it too.

Ward grew up in the Cleveland suburb of South Euclid, Ohio and said, “I figured I would never see the Indians win anything unless I wrote a movie where they did. That was the real genesis behind the movie.” But then the movie was shot in Milwaukee.

Throughout the movie, each win gets a piece of paper with a nude image of Phelps. However, in the original cut, she picked thewhole  team and was really on their side. Test audiences liked her better as a bad girl.

Could anyone really play? Well, Sheen pitched in high school and did steroids for two months, which gave him an 88 MPH fastball. And yeah, Bob Uecker really played. His line, “Just a bit outside,” has entered the words of nearly every baseball announcer.

Major League was made into and released as a video game, developed by Lenar and published by Irem, exclusively in Japan. That’s crazy!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Bedroom Eyes II was on USA Up All Night on July 5, 1996.

Don’t worry if you never saw Bedroom Eyes. This Chuck Vincent-directed film has nothing to do with it. Yes, the characters have the same names, but it’s all different actors. This insane film can really stand on its own, as it combines a Cinemax After Dark film with a giallo. If I’ve learned anything from the movies of Mr. Vincent, it’s that you have no idea where they’re going.

Harry Ross (Wings Hauser) lives in a world of little to no morals. His business partner gets an inside trading tip that could make them rich from one of his friends with benefits. But when it comes to love, his life is an even bigger mess.

Let me see if I can summarize it for you: His ex-wife JoBeth (adult film star and Vincent’s favorite actress Veronica Hart) tried to kill Harry five years ago and went to prison. Meanwhile, his wife Carolyn (Kathy Shower, Playboy Playmate of the Year 1986) has been all messed up since Harry broke up with one of his girlfriends, Alexandria, who was killed in a hit-and-run accident the very same night that Harry broke up with her.

Things get worse when Harry catches his wife aardvarking with Matthew, a hip young artist. To fix things, our hero, such as it is, decides to get horizontal with Sophie (B,r), an artist. He promises her that his wife can make her famous, but he soon falls for her.

Somehow, Sophie is Alexandria’s sister, there’s some murder, and there’s plenty of fishing for kippers. Moistening the Pope. Punching the cow. You know what I mean — sweet, sweet lovemaking. Even after Harry gets stabbed multiple times, he is still able to play some slophockey.

Linda Blair has brought me down many dark corridors. This is one of them, a movie that takes Wings Hauser through hell and finally jumping across rooftops and beating up cops. That’s what happens when you go in too deep.