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.

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: