USA UP ALL NIGHT: Bedroom Eyes II (1989)

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.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: UHF (1989)

Sept 8-14 Sketchy Comedy Week: “…plotless satires, many of which were only excuses for drug humor or gratuitous nudity sprinkled with the cheapest of gags. The typical form was a channel-changing structure, which would go from one sketch to the next under the premise that this was just another night at home watching the old boob tube. The medium is the message, baby!”

Where else could Weird Al go after several albums and music videos? To the far end of the TV dial lies this film, in which he plays George Newman, who takes over Channel 62. When he’s mistreated by the boss of Channel 8, R.J. Fletcher (Kevin McCarthy), he decides to lead his station — which is mostly reruns that everyone has already seen — to success.

Soon, the janitor (Michael Richards) is hosting Stanley Spadowski’s Clubhouse, and the ratings are great. Except that George’s gambling uncle (Stanley Brock) and the owner of the station, well, he owes money to his bookie, and they’re about to lose the station. Fran Drescher, Victoria Jackson, Anthony Geary (as an alien!), Billy Barty, John Paragon, Belinda Bauer, Dr. Demento, Emo Philips and many more appear.

But these are just simple descriptions of this movie. The joy is in watching it, a movie that has TV shows in it like Wheel of Fish and Raul’s Wild Kingdom. That has Weird Al become Rambo. Spatula City — “I liked the spatulas so much, I bought the company.” — and a car salesman who says, “I’ll club a seal to make a better deal.” You can see the station’s line-up in one scene. They are — including the ones I already mentioned — Beastiality Today, Beat the Loan Shark, The Beverly Hillbillies, Bowling for Burgers, Buddha Knows Best, Dog Racing from Rio de Janeiro, Druids on Parade, Eye On Toxic Waste, Fun with Dirt, Leave it to Bigfoot, Mr. Ed, My Three Mutants, Name that Stain, News, That’s Disgusting, The Flying Pope, The Lice is Right, The Young and the Dyslexic, Town Talk, Traffic Court, Secrets of the Universe, Underwater Bingo for Teens, Strip Solitaire, Volcano Worshippers Hour, Wide World of Tractor Pulls, Wonderful World of Phlegm and You Bet Your Pink Slip.

Anyways, you either get it or you don’t. I do, I hope you do, let’s talk about it in the comments. Ghandi IIConan the Librarian?

USA UP ALL NIGHT: I Was a Teenage TV Terrorist (1985)

EDITOR’S NOTE: I Was a Teenage TV Terrorist was on USA Up All Night on January 14, April 29 and October 13, 1989.

Directed by Sanford Singer (The Body Politic) and co-written by Singer and Kevin McDonough, this film was produced by Lloyd Kaufman’s sister, Susan. Paul (Adam Nathan) and his girlfriend Donna (Juliet Hanlon) move to Jersey City, where he works for his father’s Romance Entertainment and she acts in asparagus commercials. He makes a deal selling forgotten equipment and runs into problems with his boss, Murphy (Mikhall Druhan). Somehow, this all turns into Paul and Donna kidnapping a CEO and being live on the air terrorists with a bomb threat. Remember when people did those?

This may have been distributed by Troma, but it isn’t a Troma movie. It’s too smart for that. When you’re young and bored, you really will try anything. I really liked Guillermo Gonzelez, who plays the Cuban building manager Rico, who should be in this a lot more than he is. It’s strange — most people who have discussed this online either think that it’s vapid or smart enough to be a cynical take on movies that are just like this. That’s a hell of a balancing act.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CAULDRON FILMS BLU-RAY RELEASE: House of Lost Souls (1989)

Hell yeah this is Ghosthouse 3 — yeah, I’m way into the Ghosthouse and La Casa movies — and it is filled with all the magic and absolutely baffling things that make the original film something that I love like others feel appreciation for fine paintings or great food.

Directed and written by Umberto Lenzi, this movie has the most basic of outlines, as a group of people stay at a cursed hotel. And then, as I like to say, hijinks ensue.

There’s a ghost monk that wouldn’t exist if Romero didn’t include a Hare Krishna in one of his movies, as well as a bear trap bloodbath that is pretty darn upsetting and all the head lopping, knife stabbing and a child killed by a washing machine, which is the kind of thing that makes Italian horror — even at the end of it all — so worthwhile.

Plus — Claudio Simonetti makes music that absolutely works for this. Seriously, the ghost movies of Lenzi are the hot chocolate at the end of a cold day, a balm for my constantly besieged and worried soul.

This Cauldron Films release is for the non-box set retail edition of House of Lost Souls. It has a new 2K restoration and extras including two commentaries, one with Rod Barnett and Adrian Smith and the other with Samm Deighan. There are also interviews with FX artist Elio Terribili, composer Claudio Simonetti and Umberto Lenzi. You can order it from MVD.

Bonus: You can hear me discuss these movies on my podcast:

 

CAULDRON FILMS BLU-RAY RELEASE: House of Witchcraft (1989)

La casa del sortilegio (The House of the Spell) finds our old friend Umberto Lenzi making a TV movie that fits right into his Ghosthouse style, and I, for one, could not be happier.

This is one of four films in the Doomed Houses series, which also includes his The House of Lost Souls and Fulci’s The Sweet House of Horrors and The House of Clocks. And he decides that what this movie needs is lots of the hero having visions of losing his head and having it thrown into cauldrons and giant vats of soup. And you know what they say, there ain’t no fake severed head like an Italian fake severed head.

Also: our hero Luke has a tarot-obsessed wife named Martha, and if I know my Italian exploitation conventions — and you know I do — anyone named Martha is evil.

Also, Italian directors hate cats, and Lenzi says, “I guess I’ll continue that tradition,” and has a scene where someone throws a black cat at the TV, and it explodes on impact.

You better believe that the words La Casa were huge on the posters for this. I mean, by posters, it played on TV. Ah, you know what I mean.

Lenzi makes a film that may not be a narrative wonder, but if you made a supercut of all its weirdest scenes, you’d find a priest being beaten to death with a crowbar by a witch, a boyfriend chopped into pieces and dumped down a well and a basement where it snows and the daughter becomes a ghost. And maggots!

“You have to have maggots in this sauce,” screamed Lenzi, mad with cooking energy in the kitchen.

This movie is also called Ghosthouse 4, and for that, I love it sixteen times as much. Also: I went deep on the La Casa movies in this article.

This Cauldron Films release is for the non-box set retail edition of House of Witchcraft. It has a new 2K restoration and extras including commentary by Eugenio Ercolani, Nathaniel Thompson, and Troy Howarth, and interviews with FX artist Elio Terribili and cinematographer Nino Celeste. You can order it from MVD.

Bonus: You can hear me discuss these movies on my podcast:

CAULDRON FILMS BLU-RAY RELEASE: The Sweet House of Horrors (1989)

If you read the description for this movie — a young couple who are murdered by a burglar return as ghosts to watch over their two young orphaned children and save their home — you may think, “Ah, a nice movie for the whole family.”

You may also ask who directed this. Well, good news. It’s Lucio Fulci, which means that the murder of the parents is so gory that it even gave me pause, and then the rest of the film is very family friendly and has numerous scenes of kids laughing and having a good time at the ghost antics. The dad’s head gets crushed and the mom’s eyeball pops out and oh Lucio, I love you so much. You can’t help but be you. Only you would make a horror movie for kids and have a man get run over by a truck and his intestines show up on the outside of his body.

Somehow, Fulci did show some restraint by having Cinzia Monreale in his movie and not having a dog tear her throat out with its teeth.

Sarah (Ilary Blasi) and Marco (Giuliano Gensini) don’t want to leave their house. And why should they, as their parents can make toys float and throw rotund men down the stairs, which will never not be funny and I’m a rotund man and feel that I can say that.

After all manner of attempts to get them to leave, the parents decide to put their essences into two small stones so that they can be with their children forever, which is as sweet as Fulci gets.

He follows this by having a spiritualist try to take those stones, which quickly melts his hand into a bloody stump of goo. The kids find this uproarious fun and laugh as they freeze for the credits.

Fulci spoke very positively on the two made for TV films made for the La case maledette series — the other is House of Clocks — telling Roberto Curti in Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1980-1989 that they were “Fantastic! Excellent filmmaking!” and “two of his best films he made!”

I kind of am on his side on this one. I mean, what other Fulci movie has a ghost shove a large man down the steps and kids dance and sing “Sausage is dead!”?

This Cauldron Films release is for the non-box set retail edition of The Sweet House of Horrors. It has a new 2K restoration and extras including commentary by Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth, and interviews with Massimo Antonello Geleng, Cinzia Monreale, editor Alberto Moriani, Gigliola Battaglini, Jean-Christophe Brétigniere, Lino Salemme and Pascal Persiano. You can order it from MVD.

BONUS: You can hear me discuss these movies on my podcast:

CAULDRON FILMS BLU-RAY RELEASE: The House of Clocks (1989)

Lucio Fulci made two movies in the Houses of Doom series of TV movies, this one and The Sweet House of Horrors, and both of them are totally his vision, and we’re all better for that.

House of Clocks brings several narratives together: Victor and Sarah are an elderly couple who live in the titular house and are very protective of what they own to the point that they’ve already murdered their money-hungry nephew and his wife, as well as the maid who grew suspicious. But hey, Al Cliver still loves them, even if he has one eye, and he protects the grounds.

Meanwhile, Diana, Tony, and Paul are shoplifting and killing cats — welcome to Italy — when they hear about the old couple and how rich they are. Diana talks her way into the house, but things unravel quickly, and before you know it, they’ve killed everyone in the house, and the clocks start moving backward, and the dogs that patrol the grounds have them trapped.

So they do what anyone else would: they get high and Diana and Tony make love, leaving Paul all sad and soon dead at the hands of the revived occupants of the house, with Sarah coming back to stab Diana’s hand directly to a . Tony Tony getting pulled into a grave before the nephew and his wife assert themselves.

The trio wakes up in their car and is sure that they must be really high and all of this was in their head, but then that cat comes back from the dead and kills them all. Well done, cat.

Everyone in this movie is horrible, and they all deserve to die, and they all do several times. The best part of all of it is that Fulci made this for TV, and it has multiple stabbings, geyser sprays of blood, old women being shot, murdered cats and someone stabbed so deeply through the stomach that you can see sunlight through their body. Suffice it to say that it never aired and eventually played Japanese theaters.

This Cauldron Films release is for the non-box set retail edition of The House of Clocks. It has a new 2K restoration and extras including commentary by Eugenio Ercolani, Nathaniel Thompson, and Troy Howarth, and interviews with cinematographer Nino Celeste, composer Vince Tempera, 1st AD Michele De Angelis, FX artist Elio Terribili, and actors Paolo Paoloni, Carla Cassola and Al Cliver. You can order it from MVD.

Bonus: You can hear me discuss these movies on my podcast:

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Beverly Hills Brats (1989)

Aug 11-17 Whoopi Goldberg Week: She’s become a corny tv lady these days, but let’s not forget that at her peak Whoopi was one of the funniest people alive.

Scooter (Peter Billingsly, not just Ralphie) is a teenager ignored by his plastic surgeron father (Martin Sheen) and his sblings, Sterling (Ramon Estevez) and Tiffany (Cathy Podewell). He decides to work with two criminals, Clive (Burt Young) and Elmo (George Kirby), to kidnap him.

This was directed by Jim Sotos. Yes, a kid movie by the man who directed Forced Entry. Well, he also made Sweet Sixteen and Hot Moves. Again, not the guy I’d pick to make this movie for children. It was written by actress Terry Moore, along with her husband Jerry Rivers and Linda Silverthorn.

Whoopi shows up to say the name of the movie. You have to love that.

Tab Hunter and Henry Silva were originally going to be in this, and Peter Billingsley and Henry Silva are the buddy movie team that I never knew I needed.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Loverboy (1989)

July 7-13 Teen Movie Hell Week: From the book description on the Bazillion Points website: All-seeing author Mike “McBeardo” McPadden (Heavy Metal Movies) passes righteous judgment over the entire (teen movie) genre, one boobs-and-boner opus at a time. In more than 350 reviews and sidebars, Teen Movie Hell lays the crucible of coming-of-age comedies bare, from party-hearty farces such as The Pom-Pom Girls, Up the Creek, and Fraternity Vacation to the extreme insanity exploding all over King Frat, Screwballs, The Party Animal, and Surf II: The End of the Trilogy.

Directed by Joan Micklin Silver and written by Robin Schiff, Tom Ropelewski and Leslie Dixon, Loverboy casts future heartthrob Patrick Dempsey as Randy Bodek, a guy slacking through college and living with his girlfriend Jenny (Nancy Valen) when his dad (Robery Ginty!?) calls him home, refusing to pay for school any more.

After getting a job at Senor Pizza, he soon learns that the drivers hook up with customers, which leads to the improbable affair between him and Alex Barnett, played by the angelic Barbara Carrera. All the love notes — and the fact that his son is dressing better — lead Randy’s dad to think he’s gay. 1989, everyone.

Every order for extra anchovies means that Randy will be both sleeping with an older woman and learning how to be a better lover and partner, thanks to them, romancing a series of clients, including Kyoko Bruckner (Kim Miyori), Dr. Joyce Palmer (Kirstie Alley), and Monica Delancy (Carrie Fisher).  The husbands soon learn that this is happening and start to hunt down Randy. One of those husbands is Vic Tayback and there’s also a scene where Randy almost sleeps with his mom Diane (Kate Jackson). What a cast — E.G. Daily and Robert Picardo are also in this.

This being 1989, the fact that everyone thinks Randy is gay saves the day. Of course, he has no male clients. What male escorts sleep with other guys? Right?

JUNESPLOITATION:L.A. Bounty (1989)

June 25: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Wings Hauser Tribute!

This movie is a dream.

Worth Keeter, moving up from the Earl Owensby studios, is directing.

Sybil Danning as vigilante ex-cop Ruger in a movie made to get away from her sex symbol status but just look at the cover of this with her holding a rifle and man, it’s just what 17-year-old me was afraid of, that there were girls out there that looked like Sybil Danning and someday I might have to talk to them. She also wrote and produced this effort, which happened when International Video Entertainment realized how well the Sybil Danning Adventure Video releases they made — she just hosted — did so well.

Gary Graver is shooting it.

Wings Hauser as Cavanaugh, a drug dealer who is, as all Wings Hauser bad guys must be, absolutely beyond evil and out of his mind. He’s also a painter in this. An insane painter.

A candidate for mayor of Los Angeles has been kidnapped and his wife nearly killed, saved only by Ruger shooting first at the criminals. The politician’s wealthy wife, Kelly Rhodes (Lenore Kasdorf, Rico’s mom!), doesn’t dig that Ruger lives in a filthy trailer like she’s Martin Riggs or something, but they quickly bond over, you know, hating drug-dealing scuzzbuckets and being hunted by that very same drug-selling villain.

The sad part is that Steve James was supposed to be in this, and then they even shot photos of Danning with him for Ruger: L.A. Bounty 2, but yeah, I still don’t want to admit that Steve James is dead. Danning kept pushing for this character, as Ruger was in the comic book Concrete Storm with James as Major Washington Lyons and another comic in 2015, too.

And this from Rock Paper Shotgun: “This could well be the single weirdest E3 announcement. 1980s action-movie “star” Sybil Danning is making a “cloud-based” action shooter. It’s called Ruger, and will be loosely based on the 1989 movie L.A. Bounty. The baffling press release states: “While it is still early in the development cycle, Ruger will be a highly stylized, almost comic book styled shooter. The story, written by Sybil, is being held close to the vest, but watching L.A. Bounty is sure to shed at least some light on what it’s all about. There is definitely room in the faux-retro market for more names than Tarantino and Rodriguez, and Sybil Danning certainly has the pedigree to be credible. Incredibly, the game and a Ruger film are being developed simultaneously.””

If I ever meet Jim Rossignol, who wrote that, we may discuss why he put star in quotes about Sybil Danning.

Ruger speaks 31 words in this entire movie, which also has Anthony Kiedis’ dad Blackie Dammit, Frank Doubleday — Romero from Escape from New York — and Robery Quarry in the cast.

Every fact about this movie is that Sybil didn’t dress sexy and was wearing high-waisted jeans. Have you seen Sybil Danning in 1989? She could dress like an aging U.S. Senator and be volcanic.

But yeah. Wings Hauser. He talks to God, he paints naked women, he builds death traps and kills everyone around him, friend, foe and bystander. They should put heat this movie in a spoon and shoot in my eye.

You can watch this on Tubi.