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.

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.

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:

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:

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: