EDITOR’S NOTE: Skin Deep was on USA Up All Night on August 19, 1995; October 11, 1996 and April 19, 1997.

I don’t understand myself. I will defend absolute scumbags like Joe D’Amato and Jess Franco as artists but feel like I need a shower every time I watch a Blake Edwards movie. This has the plot of nearly every one of his movies that I’ve ever seen: Zachary “Zach” Hutton (John Ritter) is an author who has a weakness for alcohol and beautiful women. Hijinks ensue.

The movie starts with his mistress (Denise Crosby) catching him in bed with his hairdryer and they’re all caught by his wife Alex (Alyson Reed). What follows is basically Zach getting laid and nearly killed by a whole bunch of women, including the deranged Molly (Julianne Phillips) who hooks him up to a skin-treatment electro-therapy machine that gives him spasms, a glow-in-the-dark condom sex scene with Amy (Chelsea Field) and being carried to bed by bodybuilder Lonnie Jones, who is played by Raye Hollitt, Zap of American Gladiators. She comes off as the most positive and fun of all the women, despite him clearly being worried that she has such obviously masculine qualities. In fact, she dwarfs Zach who says that he feels like Mrs. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Ritter is fine in this but the role was written for Dudley Moore. Dudley Moore in mind. Moore felt the part was too similar to 10 so he turned it town. This led to a rift between him and Edwards. That may be why the original title was 11. This also feels like IMDB BS to me.

At the very least, Vincent Gardenia is good in this.

Seriously, for all the lessons that Zach is supposed to learn, he really doesn’t learn much. We are in his corner only because he is the hero of the movie and at times, I wasn’t in his corner in the least. What a waste of the charming Ritter, as Edwards keeps making movies about white upper class men ruining their lives through drinking and women only to lose nothing. They’re still running their world at the end, no matter what.

At least in D’Amato movies, the rich are shown to be snuff film watching maniacs and are outsmarted by a gorgeous sex positive woman of color.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: My Mom’s A Werewolf was on USA Up All Night on July 31, 1992; Septmeber 18, 1993 and April 22, 1994.

You may have asked, “Did the director of Death Spa make anything else?” I’m here to answer that affirmatively, with My Mom’s A Werewolf, an oddity that somehow unites some of my favorite disparate stars and plops them into a late 80’s comedy. This movie is ridiculous, yet it got me right from the beginning, thanks to plenty of cheesy synth and MTV era rock — I have a weakness for bands that only got their songs into one movie no one has ever heard of — as well as its loving depiction of a horror movie convention.

Leslie Shaber (Susan Blakely, who between Capone, The Lords of Flatbush, The Concorde … Airport ’79 and Over the Top is all over our site; she’s also Cherry Diamond in Dream a Little Dream) is a suburban mom who has a boring life and a husband named Howard (John Schuck, forever Sgt. Charles Enright from McMillan & Wife, as well as the 80’s version of Herman Munster, the robotic cop from short-lived 70’s series Homes & Yoyo and the Klingon Kamarag, one of the few Star Trek characters to appear in more than one more of the films).

Her daughter Jennifer (Tina Caspary, who makes appearances in tons of 80’s favorites like Can’t Buy Me Love, Teen Witch, Mac and Me and Annie) worries that her parents will get divorced, but she continually gets sidetracked by her horror movie loving friend Stacey (Diana Barrows, who would end up in a horror movie herself, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood). I mean, this girl loves movies so much that she has Prime Evil, Deathrow Gameshow and Galaxina posters up in her room. In fact, this movie mentions Galaxina more than anyone ever has.

They meet a fortune teller (Ruth Buzzi, of course), who tells Jennifer that she has the mark of the pentagram on her face and that soon, she’ll fight an unholy evil.

After being ignored by her husband while he watches football, Leslie goes shopping for a flea collar. The owner of the story, Harry Thropen (John Saxon, who is perhaps my favorite actor of all time) offers her a free flea collar while he eats a mouse. Seriously, he has the dirtiest and scariest pet store you’ve ever seen. So, of course, she falls for him and he ends up biting one of her toes, changing her.

This movie strangely treats the powers of werewolves like vampires, but hey, if you wanted to see Saxon shirtless, this movie is all for you.

This movie turns into sight gag city, with Jewish deli jokes, singing werewolves, a riff on the dentist scene from Little Shop of Horrors (the dentist is Geno Silva, who was the silent killer The Skull in Scarface) and the wolfen mom seeing John Saxon everywhere she goes.

It ends up being daughter against werewolf lord, complete with knowledge straight out of Fangoria. Oh yeah — Solid Gold host Marilyn McCoo and Marcia Wallace, who was the secretary on the original The Bob Newhart Show and Edna Krabappel on The Simpsons also is in here. Keep an eye out for Kimmy Robertson, who was Lucy on Twin Peaks too.

If you go into this expecting nothing to be serious and John Saxon quite literally chewing everything he can, then you’ll enjoy this as much as I did.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Roller Blade Warriors: Taken By Force was on USA Up All Night on March 29 and 30 and November 9, 1991; April 3 and October 9, 1992 and February 6, 1993.

Donald Jackson is the same man who brought us Hell Comes to Frogtown as well as forty more movies, including The Demon Lover, I Like to Hurt People, an entire series of roller blade-themed movies that includes the movie I’m going to talk about now, as well as Roller Blade, The Roller Blade Seven, Legend of the Roller Blade, Return of the Roller Blade Seven, Rollergator and Hawk Warriors of the Wheelzone and an entire series of sequels in Frogtown like Frogtown 2, Toad Warrior, Max Hell Frog Warrior and Max Hell Frog Warrior: A Zen Rough Cut.

Donald Jackson’s movies started weird and stayed that way.

Gretchen Hope (Elizabeth Kaitan!) is traveling the wasteland protected by a nun from The Cosmic Order of the Roller Blade named Karin Cross (Kathleen Kinmont). Except that Karin gets hit with a rock and some mutants drag Gretchen to be sacrificed.

This also has Rory Calhoun in it, which kind of blows my mind, and Suzanne Solari played Sharon Cross, the same character she was in Roller Blade.

I have so many questions, like how do people roller blade in the desert and how can a movie with half-naked women warriors on roller blades actually be boring, but this movie figure that out I guess.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Fly II was on USA Up All Night on September 8, 1995; July 26, 1996 and October 3, 1997.

I hate when sequels instantly kill off the characters that you loved in the first movie, but Geena Davis wasn’t coming back for this movie. After giving birth to a larval sac, the son of the child that she had with Seth Brundle, Veronica Quaife dies. Their son grows up to be the normal-looking Martin Brundle (Eric Stoltz) whose physical and mental maturity is highly accelerated. He’s a genius, has amazing reflexes and never sleeps. He’s also aging faster than a normal human and is growing up inside the labs of Anton Bartok (Lee Richardson).

Bartok is trying to figure out the teleportation that caused Seth to become the Brundlefly. By the time that Martin is five, he has the mental and physical abilities needed to be part of this experiment. A dog he had befriended years before was mutated like his father and Martin figures out where it is and euthanizes it. He is showing signs of mutation himself, but know that he will need to hurt someone else to stop it from happening. He also falls in love with Beth Logan (Daphne Zuniga) but obviously that may not last long as he’s rapidly becoming the kind of monster that his father was.

Directed by special effects artist Chris Walas, who created the effects for the first movie. He’s only directed two other things, the Tales from the Crypt episode “‘Til Death” and The Vagrant. He created the Gremlins, the creature effects in House II: The Second Story and the effects in Naked Lunch.

The script had some big talent working on it. There’s Master of Horror Mick Garris, joined by Frank Darabont and Jim and Ken Wheat, the brother team who would go on to write The Birds II: Land’s End. Master of Horror Mick Garris’s original script was about Veronica being convinced not to abort her baby by a religious cult that adopted and raised Martin. As he rapidly ages, Martin learns that he can talk to bugs and would help a gang of kids escape the cult. Another idea had Seth being cloned and his son being the only one who could communicate with him, which became a family-friendly movie about a boy and his bug. Chris Walas hated these ideas and nearly quit because Fox hired Darabont. This is all IMDB conjecture, so it could be all kayfabe BS.

Also according to the always unreliable IMDB. they did an old 50s gimmick in some theaters where they had a nurse in each theater in case audiences were sickened by the movie.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Hot Times at Montclair High aired on USA Up All Night on December 7 and 8, 1990; July 26, 1991; January 25 and November 27, 1992 and June 5 and October 1, 1993.

At Montclair High School — can you believe the audacity of the filmmakers naming this movie — football player Sean Willis (Ross Hamilton) struggles to get good grades and has a dad who wants him to toughen up as his girlfriend Jenny Rush (Kim Valentine, who was on the TV show Tribes) finds herself in the world of sex, drugs and rock and roll thanks to her friend Susan (Leslie Owen). Then there’s Ziggy Karpkinski (Johnathan Gorman), a nerd who can’t find a girlfriend, and Jason Miller (Brent Jasmer, who was on The Bold and the Beautiful), the punk bully who is abused at home.

This is when the double audacity hits you and you wonder: Is this movie cosplaying The Breakfast Club, at least for it’s three male leads? Perhaps the stay in detention that changes the lives of Sean, Ziggy and Jason will tell you all you need to know.

This is a movie where Jenny gets assaulted by the rock singer she’s in love with and her boyfriend gathers his new friends for revenge just as much as it’s a movie where the boom mic should have been in the cast. Troy Donahue is one of the teachers and the foreign teacher is Ziggy’s love interest, which made me wonder if this was a Menahem Golan movie. Menahem never fails to put in a sexed-up older blonde musician or music teacher who shows a young boy the ways of love to the point that I believe that this is either his main fetish or tells us how he lost his cherry.

This is not a Menahem Golan movie. It would be way better.

It is directed by Jose Altonaga, who made Reawakened as recently as 2020, and written by Mark S. Simpson, who left behind writing after this. He did direct Lost Island in 1994.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Fireballs was on USA Up All Night on January 15 and September 10, 1994 and August 14, 1995. Firehouse was on May 8 and December 31, 1992. On July 23, 1993, this was a USA Up All Night double feature.

Fireballs (1989): Canada made the move in the late 1980s from slashers to sex comedies, so it seemed. This next Police Academy ripoff concerns firefighters and was filmed days after a very similar 80’s sex on the job comedy, Recruits.

Writer, producer and star Mike Strapko — along with his brother and an actor named Goran Kalezic — were production assistants on that Wassanga Beach shot, Charlie Wiener-directed film.

Wiener made a TV movie called Blue Murder and Dragon Hunt in addition to this movie (he also wrote Screwball Hotel), so let me assure you — his scumbag skills are in full effect here.

We meet our heroes — such as they are — Sam (Kalezic), Keith (Eric Crabb) and Baduski (Strapko) as they leave the beach to fight a fire, which really ends up being a surprise party for the firefighting parrot Fireballs, who loves beer and breasts.

I really think I might never have to write again after that sentence.

The movie then becomes Gung Ho, as Japanese business owner Mr. Matsuro wants to bring his company to town, but thinks that the fire department can’t handle things. He wants to bring in his own team of Japanese firefighting experts.

Can you believe I just wrote that?

Strapko was supposedly an actual firefighter, so one would assume he’d want to make the profession look more heroic than this. Actually, scratch that. He just wanted to see as many breasts as possible, much like the character he’s playing, which is really more John Belushi cosplay than anything.

This movie is my kind of film. It’s neither sexy nor funny, so the more that it attempts either, it actually becomes more of the latter. For example, the idea of a bird that is dubbed to sound like it’s swearing is mildly fine the first time, becomes grating and then annoying before becoming incoherently amazing. This is the kind of movie that demands to be watched with an entire table full of mind-altering substances and a group of people who refuse to judge it and instead demand that it get worse so that it gets better.

Firehouse (1987): When someone asks, “What was Julia Roberts’ first movie?” you can tell them it was as Babs in the 1987 sex comedy Firehouse, despite her not appearing in the credits. She’d have to wait until the next year and Satisfaction to see her name up on the screen.

This was made by J. Christian Ingvordsen, who would eventually go full auteur and write, direct and star in Blue Vengeance. Here, however, he’s made a film about some young ladies who have to deal with the seamier side of firefighting and convince the boys that they can make it.

Take it from someone who watched but this and Fireballs. They’re both horrible, but at least that one has a talking bird and aggressively tries to be so bad. This one just…is. We never got the sequel Firehouse: The 2nd Alarm.

One of the writers was Rick Marx who also wrote Gor, Outlaw of Gor, Dragonard, Platoon Leader, Doom Asylum, Tenement, Wanda Whips Wall Street and adult films with titles like Taboo American Style: The Ruthless Beginning, Vagablonde and Sex World Girls as well as Chuck Vincent’s Roommates, Slammer Girls and Warrior Queen.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Vice Academy aired on USA Up All Night on March 23 and 24 and October 20, 1990; July 13 and December 27, 1991; August 14 and 15, 1992; May 22, 1993; November 11, 1994; January 12 and May 17, 1995; October 19, 1996; March 29, April 25 and November 29, 1997.

Are you ready for the movie that won USA Networks’ B-Movie Awards for Best Picture and has the honor of being their highest-rated late-night film when it first aired on cable television?

How about a Police Academy ripoff with Ginger Lynn and Linnea Quigley? Are you prepared for that?

What if I told you that RIck Sloane, the maker of Hobgoblins, was the creator?

Yeah, you’d watch that.

Holly Wells (Ginger Lynn, the one-time queen of VHS adult films) goes legit, teaming with scream queen Linnea Quigley, who plays Didi, to enter a vice school where cops learn how to bust adult movies and prostitution.

Tamara Clatterbuck, who is also in Hobgoblins and was a dominatrix in UHF, is Tinsel while Jean Carol is the evil Queen Bee. Karen Russell also shows up and you remember her from films like Hellbent, Phoenix the Warrior, Dr. Alien and Shock ‘Em Dead.

Jayne Hamil also makes the first of her five appearances as vice academy teacher Miss Thelma Louise Devonshire. And hey! The actress using the name Christian Barr who plays Cherry Pop is actually Allison Barron, who we all know as Helen from Night of the Demons.

Ginger Lynn isn’t the only adult star in this. The late Viper, a former ballet dancer who eventually left the adult industry and became a phlebotomy technician is here too.

This is a movie so cheap that the girls all wore their own outfits and Ginger drives her own car in the opening. Are clothes and cars why you’re watching this? I dare say no.

You can watch this on Tubi or grab the blu ray set of the first three films from Vinegar Syndrome. It features interviews with Lynn and Quigley, as well as commentary Rick Sloane.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Assault of the Party Nerds aired on USA Up All Night on July 6 and November 30, 1990; May 25, 1991; March 27 and December 5, 1992; May 21, 1993; May 31 and December 20, 1996 and June 28, 1997.

Richard Gabai directed, wrote and stars in this as Ritchie Spencer, one of the party nerds who will be assaulting us if the title is true. The goal is to join the Lambda Alpha Eta and, as they say, hijinks ensue.

Former idol Troy Donahue is in this, but the real draw, as always, would be Michelle Bauer and Linnea Quigley literally playing thirtysomething teenagers. Even wilder, Bauer was six months pregnant while this movie was being made.

Tantala Ray is also in this and she did plenty of adult with titles that make me laugh because I’m as always immature such as Let Me Tell Ya ‘Bout Fat Chicks, Tantala’s Fat Rack and Beverly Hills Cox.

It’s basically Revenge of the Nerds with Bauer and Quigley and in my heart, that’s an upgrade. There’s also a sequel, Assault of the Party Nerds 2 that adds Burt Ward, Artie Johnson, Tane McClure (Elle’s mom in Legally Blonde), Maureen LaVette (Virgin High) and most perfectly, Rhonda Shear.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Dialing for Dingbats aired on USA Up All Night on February 22 and September 28, 1991 and June 19, 1992.

All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger, which was written by Lloyd Kaufman and James Gunn, says that in this movie, “Troma tackles yet another socially important issue with the addiction of 1-900 party lines. This is the first film about phone sex.”

Other than Out of the Dark, The Telephone Book or Party Line.

Directed by Peter Slodczyk, who co-wrote this with Michael Solton (Solton and “Weird” Al Yankovic were high school friends which is how Steve Jay, the bassist in Al’s band, scored this movie, including the song “Partyline”), this film tells the story of Randy (Michael Jeffries), an unlucky slob at love who is convinced by Ernie Bernay (John Caponera) to try out his party line to find love.

Somehow, at 78 minutes, this movie still has the entire trailer for The Toxic Avenger in it, as well as a phone sex ad made up of clips from that movie. There are also clips of other commercials, like this was a Kentucky Fried Movie style film that still tries to have a narrative.

It’s somewhat strange to watch this on an old USA Up All Night episode that has phone sex ads during every commercial, making you wonder what is real and what is the movie.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Prom Night III: The Last Kiss was on USA Up All Night on May 10 and 11, 1991 and February 20, 1993.

Oh Canada. You brought us the just alight Prom Night, the beyond great and why doesn’t everyone celebrate this movie like they do way more inferior films Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II and the not altogether bad Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil.

Notably, none of those movies relate to one another at all. So go figure, the one film in the series that I never watched ended up being the only actual sequel.

That said, the start of the film completely ignores everything we’ve learned before. Mary Lou, now played by Courtney Taylor instead of Lisa Schrage, has been in Hell since she died at a school dance in 1957. But she has a nail file and has been chipping away at the chains that bind her for decades, finally escaping back into our world. As she returns to Hamilton High School — totally in Canada, but overly American thanks to “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and flags a plenty and non-Canadian football — she starts off on the right foot by killing a janitor and using a jukebox to blast the pacemaker out of an old lover’s chest.

Speaking of those American flags, one night totally average high school student Alexander Grey leaves his girlfriend Sarah Monroe (Cynthia Preston, who is in another beyond wild Canadian film, Pin) behind as he soul searches about his total average-ness. He’s discovered by Mary Lou and after some two person push-ups on the stars and bars, he’s under her spell.

It works. His grades go up. He becomes a football hero. And he’s never had better sex ever.

So what’s wrong? Well, Mary Lou is killing everyone in his way.

Like the guidance counselor who doesn’t believe in our protagonist? She gets her face burned off with battery acid. His football rival gets a ball thrown through his stomach. And soon, even Alexander’s slacker best friend Shane gets his heart ripped out.

Alexander is conflicted. He loves his average girlfriend, but she’s already dumped him for a nerd. Well, a nerd who gets killed by AV equipment. And as we’ve already learned about Mary Lou, she will not be stopped when she wants something, even if her female rival has learned how to use a flamethrower.

Ron Oliver wrote the screenplays for the second and third films in this series (and directed this one). The original title was The Haunting of Hamilton High, as there was no plan to connect these to the Prom Night series. The money for this came from Live Entertainment. A few days before filming started, Oliver ended up going to dinner with the family that owned that company, only to learn on Monday that production had been delayed because the sons had killed their mom and dad. You know them as Erik and Lyle Menendez. Another Oliver fact: he and his partner were married by Udo Kier. One more? He wrote and directed several installments of the Nickelodeon show Are You Afraid of the Dark?

This can’t live up to the proceeding version, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t try. I’ve always loved that Mary Lou is the lone slasher who embraces sex and forces men to become the final survivor — but never lets them live.

You can watch this on YouTube.