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.
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 HillsCox.
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.”
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.
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.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Think Big aired on USA Up All Night on January 22, April 17 and August 27, 1993 and January 22, 1994.
Rafe and Victor (Peter and David Paul) are truckers down on their luck, trying to keep their truck from going back to the bank. For their last chance, they’re sent with a load of toxic waste and put on a timer, on their way to a company called Tech Star that uses child labor. One of the precocious geniuses is Holly Sherwood (Ari Meyers, Emma Jean from Katie & Allie), who hides in their truck with her invention that can turn off and turn on anything electronic. This puts them at odds with Dr. Bruekner (Martin Mull), the CEO of Tech Star, who wants Holly and her invention.
Claudia Christian is in this as a doctor, as is Richard Kiel as a hired thug and yes, Richard Moll is in it too. I wish we had had a buddy comedy with both of them in it. Throw in Michael Winslow, David Carradine and Tiny Lister? Man, who cast this movie!
EDITOR’S NOTE: Monster High aired on USA Up All Night on April 30 and August 6, 1994 and January 27 and August 25, 1995.
WARNING: Some scenes may be considered objectionable by sensitive viewers, dead people and farm animals. On the other hand, if you like that sort of thing…
Dume (Robert Lind) and Glume (Sean Haines) have brought a doomsday weapon named Mr. Armageddon (David Marriott) to Earth and let him loose on Montgomery Sterling High where eventually, everyone has to play basketball against him and his monsters to stop the end of everything for the next thousand years.
Along the way, there’s a spray can that leaves killer condoms on people’s faces, a horny gargoyle made out of rubber, zombies, a mummy and characters with names like Mel Anoma, Miss Anne Thrope, Slisa Beealzeberg, Coach Otto Parts, Norm Median and Candice Caine. There’s also a literal killer weed; that is marijuana as a murderous plant.
Somehow, people allowed director Rudiger Poe and writers Roy Langsdon and John Platt to work again. Poe would also direct a video called Imagine It!² the Power of Imagination that I wished that he had watched before he made this movie. He was also a producer for several Playboy videos that had college girls, girls next door, Farrah Fawcett, the women of Enron, Chyna, girls of reality TV, Pamela Anderson, the women of Fear Factor and the women of Starbucks. As for Langson and Platt, they would write The Forbidden Dance and the Graydon Clark movie Out of Sight, Out of Mind a year later.
Diane Frank, the French actress who stars in this as Candice Cain, was also in some other USA Up All Night movies like Mankillers and Eyes of the Serpent. If you’re the type who notices these things, she has multiple nude doubles in this movie and none of her breasts look alike from one scene to the next.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Fast Food aired on USA Up All Night on January 24, January 31 and February 1, 1992. Obviously, people were really into it to play that much that often.
Auggie Hamilton is all about making that fast buck. He’s just been kicked out of college for a gambling and drinking party after being there for way longer than four years, as well as trying to sleep with the dean’s daughter. What’s he going to do now?
So when he learns that his friend Samantha (Tracy Griffith, Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland) is about to sell her father’s garage to make way for Wrangler Bob Bundy (Jim Varney, yes, the Ernest P. Worrell playing, Slinky Dog voicing Jim Varney. Trivia note: Blake Clark, who is also in this movie, was friends with Varney and took over the voice of Slinky after Varney’s death) and his constantly growing burger empire.
How do you defeat a megacorporation? Well, you go get some drugs that make people horny and put them in your burgers, that’s how. And if you’re wondering how they get that drug, one of the way they get women in bed is to sneak them into a lab where men suffer from non-stop erections. The girls see all these bald-headed yogurt slingers and the next thing you know, they’re in bed with the guys. Because you know — that’s totally how romance works. Movies like this are why I didn’t get laid until I was 24.
How does the new fast food place get successful? Well, beyond the date rape drugs in the special sauce, they also cater a fancy preppie sorority bash being thrown by Mary Beth Bensen, who is played by the same person who played the grown-up Angela in Sleepaway Camp II and Sleepaway Camp III. That’s Pamela Springsteen and yes, she’s the Boss’s sister.
Stick around — Traci Lords also shows up as an industrial spy, sent by Wrangler Bob to ruin our heroes. And oh yeah — the judge of their big case is played Kevin McCarthy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Michael J. Pollard shows up, too.
This isn’t a movie you’d be proud to talk about with anyone, but who cares? Varney is great, Traci Lords is Traci Lords and burgers cause people to get laid. You could do much worse.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Nightmare Beach aired on USA Up All Night — I remember watching it! — even if my lists can’t give me an exact date.
You can say that Umberto Lenzi’s films are trashy, sleazy paeans to mayhem and gore. I won’t disagree with you. There’s Cannibal Ferox, a movie that tries to take that genre further and deeper than even I thought it could go. It worked, as its advertising proclaims that it’s “the most violent film ever made” and “banned in 31 countries.” Then there’s Ironmaster, where George Eastman wears a lionpelt on his head and murders his way through a ripoff of Clan of the Cave Bear that’s a million times better than the movie that inspired it. And then there’s Ghosthouse, a slasher haunted house film that’s baffling in its ridiculousness and willingness to get weirder and weirder as time goes on, as just as much time is given to discussing chili and the question “Who is more popular in Denver, Kim Basinger or Kelly LeBrock?” than exploring the House by the Cemetery and watching teens get colorfully pulped into oblivion.
In short, Lenzi is the kind of filmmaker that makes me tear up and yell things at my TV like, “Genius!” and “I love you, Umberto!” Nightmare Beach — also known as Welcome to Spring Break — is his take on the slasher in Miami, halfway around the world from home, celebrating sin, sex and stabbings.
That said, Lenzi for years denied that this was his film.
Supposedly, he had a falling out with the producers and wanted to be taken off the film as he found it too similar to his film Seven Blood-Stained Orchids. Screenwriter James Justice, working under the name Harry Kirkpatrick, took over but convinced Lenzi to remain on set as an advisor. Now, knowing what we know of Italian horror, a name like Harry Killpatrick sounds like a fake Americanized name for the director. Lenzi would continually say, “My contribution consisted solely of providing technical assistance. Welcome to Spring Break should be considered the work of Harry Kirkpatrick.”
However, in his book Italian Crime Filmography, film historian Roberto Curti would claim that Lenzi really did direct the film and refused the credit when the film was done. After all, Lenzi and Justice would work with the same producers to make Primal Rage (with this movie’s writer Vittirio Rambaldi directing and heroine Sarah Buxton showing up, too).
No matter — I love this movie. Yes, the kind of love that I’ve only reserved for Lenzi’s films, where I ignore how patently insane the dialogue is. Actually, I love these films because of that. This movie is everything that you want from a slasher and so much more.
Diablo, the leader of the Demons motorcycle club, is about to be executed for killing a young woman. He confronts his accusers, like her sister Gail (Sarah G. Buxton, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead) and Strycher (John Saxon!), the cop who put him away for good. He tells that he’ll see them all in Hell because he’s innocent and plans on coming back to kill all of them.
A year later, it’s Spring Break time in Miami, which brings football players Skip Banachek (Nicholas De Toth, who left acting for editing, working on movies like Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He’s also the son of Andrew De Toth, who was behind the camera for House of Wax and Crime Wave. He also had an amazing eyepatch, which he needed after he was attacked by a group of young men as he scouted locations in Egypt. They thought he was military leader Moyshe Dayan. He was also married to Veronica Lake, who was just the first of his seven wives) and Ronny Rivera (Rawley Valverde, who has gone on to a career in real estate) to the beach. Ronny is a pip, saying amazing things like “How would you like her to do squats on your tool?” and “You wanna bump short hairs?”
While all the sex and drinking of Spring Break is happening — this movie becomes a teen comedy like Porky’s for a bit — a masked biker has been offing people left and right. This slasher isn’t content to just use simple weapons. No, he’s custom-built his bike to include an electric chair that fries people just like Diablo. So he’s totally the killer coming back from the dead, right?
Of course, Ronny is fated to get in a fight with the Demons and get killed by the biker, just as Skip is due to hook up with Gail. Why does she find him so attractive? Because while everyone else is out and about pouring water all over t-shirts and throwing up all over themselves, he’s refusing beer and being sullen. Seems like perfect mating material, right ladies?
That’s when Nightmare Beach takes a page out of Jaws, with the town council covering up the murders and pinning the blame on Diablo while the real killer has been running free. This point is hammered home when a jokester puts a fin on his back and swims directly at some partying teens, leading a cop to just open fire without warning.
So it is Doc Willet (Michael Parks)? Strycher? Or Reverend Bates (Lance LeGault, Col. Decker from TV’s The A-Team and Elvis Presley’s stunt double in plenty of movies), whose daughter Rachel is out of control? Or Mayor Loomis (Fred Buch, who shows up in Caddyshack, Shock Waves, Porky’s II and The New Kids)?
Nobody is safe, because the killer even takes out Diablo’s girlfriend Trina by blasting her headphones with electricity, sending her eyeball straight out of her head. So is it Diablo? After all…his body is missing from its grave.
I’m not going to tell you who the killer is, other than to tell you that if you watch enough giallo, it all makes sense. After all, that’s kind of what this movie is, along with the added slashtastic gore that this era demanded.
While shot in Miami, this film boasts plenty of Italian connections. Claudio Simonetti did the score, the aforementioned Vittirio Rambaldi wrote it and his dad Carlo did the special effects. Supplementing the fine score are appearances and soundtrack songs by the bands Kirsten, Animal (whose song “Rock Like an Animal” lives up to the idea that every metal band needs a tune that references their own name), Derek St. Holmes (who played on Ted Nugent’s first solo albums and in the band MSG) and Ron Bloom, Rondinelli, Juanita and the band Rough Cutt, whose members included Jake E. Lee (Ozzy’s guitarist after Randy Rhodes, Badlands), Amir Derakh (Orgy), Paul Shortino (Quiet Riot) and Craig Goldy and Claude Schnell, who both played in Dio. If you liked how Demons mixed metal into the film, then you’re going to bang your head throughout this movie.
No moment in this movie that is boring. It’s like doing drugs with the band backstage and then getting to sit in, then go backstage and they offer you your pick of groupie. It has no morals, it knows no laws and all it wants is to ensure that you have the best time possible.
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