Tag Archives: 1990

USA UP ALL NIGHT: Buried Alive (1990)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Angel Heart was on USA Up All Night on November 7, 1992 and December, 1994.

Before he became known for his adaptations of The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and The Mist, as well as his work on The Walking Dead TV show, Frank Darabont wrote the screenplays to Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and the remake of The Blob. This film was the first he’d ever get the chance to direct.

Originally airing May 9, 1990, on the USA Network, this movie was produced under the title Till Death Do Us Part. It’s a very EC Comics-ish story of Clint Goodman (Tim Matheson, Animal House), a contractor who is very much in love with his wife, Joanna (perennial crush Jennifer Jason Leigh, the daughter of Vic Morrow, who took the name Jason in her stage name as a tribute to family friend Jason Robards). Joanna, however, wants out of Clint’s small hometown, where he’s content to live simply and fish with his best friend Sheriff Sam Eberly (Hoyt Axton, Gremlins).

So she does what any of us would do. She shacks up with CortlanVanan Owen, a doctor who has plenty of tropical fish that he’s able to extract poison from. He’s also the guy who keeps performing abortions for her so that she never has to get stuck with Clint’s child. He’s played by William Atherton, who is the go-to guy when you’re making a movie in the 1980s and need someone to be a complete asshole.

Needless to say, the bad guys are comically evil in this one, and Clint is the nicest guy ever, until he awakens in his own grave and has to claw his way back. From then on, this becomes a revenge picture and a pretty decent one at that.

This is one of those films that has been long out of print and commands high prices on eBay. You can always turn to the gray market and find bootleg copies of it, as well as the sequel. It’s one of Becca’s favorite movies, and we watch it pretty often in our house.

USA UP ALL NIGHT: Far Out Man (1990)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Far Out Man was on USA Up All Night on September 3, 1993.

A hippie, the Far Out Man (Tommy Chong, who also directed and wrote this film), goes on a road trip with his son, Kyle (Paris Chong, Tommy’s son), to see America. This is a vanity project to the point that Chong also has his daughter, Raw Dawn, play herself, his wife, Shelby, play his ex, Tree, his daughter, Robbi, is a dancer, and even his former brother-in-law, Flloyd Sneed, shows up as a drummer. Cheech Marin plays himself, hidden in the back of Far Out Man’s vehicle. It wasn’t always that way — Chong replaced William Lustig as director, and I want to know that story.

Labelled “A Tommy Chong Attempt,” this has plenty of people playing themselves, like Judd Nelson and C. Thomas Howell — married at the time to Raw Dawn — who at one point yells at a cop, “Hey, don’t you know who I am? I’m C. Thomas Howell! I was the black dude in Soul Man!”

Plus, you get Martin Mull as the therapist, Dr. Liddledick, Michael Winslow as a cop, Paul Bartell as the high school principal, Weebee Cool, and a band made up of Don Dokken from Dokken, John Norum from Europe, and Paul Monroe from XYZ. Reynaldo Rey plays their manager, who gets high on over-the-counter aspirin smashed up and overdoses, then is brought back to life by the guitar of Fthe ar Out Man.

Between that scene and C. Thomas Howell and Judd Nelson are trying to remember who they are, which made me laugh. It’s in no way as good as Chong’s earlier films, but even a lesser Chong movie can still be funny.

You can watch this on Tubi.

USA UP ALL NIGHT: Alligator II: The Mutation (1990)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Alligator II: The Mutation was on USA Up All Night on December 16, 1995, along with Jaws 3 and Orca. You can watch the host segments on the Internet Archive.

More remake than sequel, Alligator II starts with rich villain Vincent Brown (Steve Railsback) dumping some of the Future Chemicals into the sewers, which goes right to the baby alligator from the end of Alligator.

Detective David Hodges (Joseph Bologna) and his wife Chris (Dee Wallace, forever battling against eco horror) realize that all the parts of people are coming from an alligator and try to get a big party at Brown’s casino on the lake cancelled, but you know how it goes. When your mayor is Major Healey from I Dream of Jeannie (Bill Daily), these things happen. Actually, watching movies where small-minded governments ignore ecological terror and shout down people and ruin lives really feels on topic. Maybe a bit too much.

With Hodges and Officer Rich Harmon (Woody Brown) on one side and alligator hunter “Hawk” Hawkins (Richard Lynch!) and his team, which includes his brother Billy (Kane Hodder!), on the other, you know that there’s going to be a lot of people torn apart and wolfed down.

What I did not expect was the lengthy pro wrestling scene, which is filled with movie and wrestling crossover actors, like Professor Toru Tanaka, Alexis Smirnoff, Chavo Guerrero, Count Billy Varga, Gene LeBell and Bill Anderson. The man who would be the next Hulk Hogan, Tom Magee, is also here as a strongman who gets launched by the alligator’s tail.

Director Jon Hess made Watchers, while writer Curt Allen wrote Bloodstone. This movie is pure junk in the best of ways, just scenes and people chewing, Richard Lynch breaking down over the loss of his crew and rocket launches against a monstrous alligator. Watch it in the pool.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: The Reflecting Skin (1990)

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Aug 18-24 indie comix week: When I was a kid, I used to read Mad Magazine and Cracked, so when I got a little older, it didn’t take much convincing to pick up Eightball and Hate. I’m an OG in the “complaining about superheroes” game, and my scars were anointed on the Comics Journal message board!

The first of three horror movies by Phillip Ridley — followed by The Passion of Darkly Noon and Heartless — The Reflecting Skin starts with three friends — Seth Dove (Jeremy Cooper), Eben (Codie Lucas Wilbee) and Kim (Evan Hall) — doing what bored kids stuck in Idaho do. That would be inflating frogs and blowing them up all over a widow named Dolphin Blue (Lindsay Duncan).

Seth lives in a gas station, where he works when cars pull up, as his parents, Ruth (Sheila Moore) and Lewis (Duncan Fraser), exist in a state of ennui toward one another. At one point, a car full of men in dark suits pulls up and one of them promises that they will see Seth soon. Seth has been talking to his dad about vampires, so when he is sent to apologize to Dolphin, she mentions that she feels 200 years old. He starts to think that she is one of the dead.

Eben soon goes missing, and Seth’s father is sure they will be arrested for it, as everyone in town knows that he is gay. Instead of facing the police, he sets himself on fire. Cameron (Viggo Mortensen) comes back from the Army to help raise Seth and soon falls in love with Dolphin. At the same time, Seth finds an ossified fetus and believes that it is Eben, whom he turns to, convinced that his brother’s radiation poisoning is being fed on by Dolphin.

Ridley said of this movie, “I created a fabulous child-eyed view of what I imagined America to be like – it’s a kind of mythical once upon a time never-world, where guys look like Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley, and everything is set in a Wheatfield and it all looks very American gothic.”

Cinematographer Dick Pope captured the magic hour here, orange fields of grain set against the black car filled with evil. Everything heads to a dark end, as the actual monsters of the world aren’t the monsters in a child’s mind, but the very simple killers that roam the highways around the small town.

Coil, which had Stephen Thrower as a member, used samples from The Reflecting Skin on Stolen & Contaminated Songs.

“It’s all so horrible, you know, the nightmare of childhood. And it only gets worse. One day, you’ll wake up, and you’ll be past it. Your beautiful skin will wrinkle and shrivel up, you’ll lose your hair, your sight, your memory. Your blood will thicken, and your teeth will turn yellow and loose. You will start to stink and fart, and all your friends will be dead. You’ll succumb to arthritis, angina, senile dementia, you’ll piss yourself, shit yourself, drool at the mouth. Just pray that when this happens you’ve got someone to love you, because if you’re loved you’ll still be young.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: The World’s Oldest Living Bridesmaid (1990)

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July 14-20  Vanity Project Week: “…it might be said that the specific remedy for vanity is laughter, and that the one failing that is essentially laughter is vanity.” Are these products of passionate and industrious independent filmmakers OR outrageous glimpses into the inner workings of self-obsessed maniacs??

Directed by TV vet Joseph L. Scanlan and written by Janet Kovalcik, this was produced by its star, Donna Mills. She stars as rich and powerful lawyer Brenda Morgan, who falls for her much younger assistant, Alex (Brian Wimmer). And is that Art Hindle? Yes.

She’s sick of all of her assistants getting married and quitting after a year. She’s a career woman and marriage was never in the offering for her — dudes, it’s Donna Mills, I like how this film plays like “Oh, she has glasses, how gross” — so she can’t get anyone who would do such a thing.

This was released on VHS by Action International! That blows my mind. The same company that released Elves, The Devil’s Honey, They Call Me Macho Woman! and Homeboyz II: Crack City.

It’s one of five films produced by Donna Mills Productions. The others? Intimate Encounters, in which “A bored suburban housewife embarks upon a series of affairs seemingly triggered by escapism and fantasy.” Alcoholic drama My Name Is Kate. An Element of Truth, in which Donna is a thief. Finally, The Eyes Have It. “Donna Mills is one of the few actresses in Hollywood who actually applies her own makeup on the set and off. Now, you too can share in all of her beauty secrets in this easy-to-follow visual learning method.”

You can watch this on YouTube.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Caged Fury (1990)

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At one point in this movie, the female inmates begin to fight, and Crazy Daisy (Tiffany Million, once a GL, OW girl and later an adult star) says, “I’ve seen this in Chained Heat!”

Yes, you sure did.

While Cirio H. Santiago also made a movie called Caged Fury just six years earlier, this one — directed and written by Bill Milling (who also wrote Silent Madness and Savage Dawn; he also directed adult films under the name Philip Drexler Jr. (A Scent of Heather), G.W. Hunter (Heart Throbs), Craig Ashwood (All American Girls), William J. Haddington Jr. (When A Woman Calls), Chiang (The Vixens of Kung Fu (A Tale of Yin Yang), Jim Hunter (Up Up and Away), Luis F. Antonero (Temptations) and Bill or Dexter Eagle (Virgin Snow).

Wikipedia claims that Fernando Fonseca (The Unholy) and one of my obsessions, Philip Yordan, wrote this, but I see no other evidence anywhere. Fonseca only wrote one other film, South Beach Dreams, and Yordan and Cannon never worked together, which is a fact that still makes me sad.

Kat Collins (Roxanna Michaels) is living out the first stanza of Poison’s “Fallen Angel:”

“She stepped off the bus out into the city streets

Just a small town and a girl with her whole life

Packed in a suitcase by her feet

But somehow the lights didn’t shine as bright as they did

On her mama’s TV screen

And the work seemed harder

And the days seemed longer

Than she ever thought they’d be”

After kissing her father (Michael Parks) goodbye and leaving Utah for Hollywood, she meets Rhonda Wallace (April Dawn Dollarhide), who gets her work with a photographer named Buck (Blake Lewis). After posing, the girls head off for the Sunset Strip and get into it with some bikers, which, seeing as how this is a 1990 direct-to-video movie, gets rapey and then they get saved by good, guy bike enthusiast Victor (Erik Estrada) and American Combat Karate school leader Dirk (Richard Barathy).

Buck then introduces the ladies to a porn director, but that ends up setting them up as prostitutes and sending them off to Honeywell Prison, which is where the movie really gets going. You know exactly all of the women in prison moments, precisely, and the guards are as bad as you’d think they’d be. They’re led by Spyder (Gregory Scott Cummins, former San Diego Chargers punter) and include Pizzaface (Ron Jeremy), Paul Smith remembering everything he once did years ago in a similar role in Midnight Express and Mindi Miller (Sugar from Penitentiary III) as Warden Sybil Thorn, an S&M catsuit wearing evildoer named for two WIP legends: Sybil Danning from Caged Heat and Dyanne Thorne, who forever will be Ilsa.

So while Roxanne is getting indoctrinated into white slavery, her sister Tracy (Elena Sahagun) figures that the best plan is to do the exact same things her sister did and get put in the same prison. She’s also helped by giallo-level policework from Detective Randall Stoner (James Hong). Of course, Estrada and Barathy have to rescue her, but Estrada catches a bullet, so the white kung fu expert has to fight his way out of this lingerie hell, which magically releases them right in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater.

This movie is also replete with adult stars as prisoners, including Kascha using her more mainstream name Alison LePriol, Janine Lindemulder — who knows a little something about the big house after serving a six-month federal prison sentence for tax evasion — as Lulu (you may recognize her, if you didn’t watch adult movies, as being on the cover of Blink 182’s Enema of the State album cover or for her relationship with Jesse James) and Julia Parton (yes, a relative of Dolly and once the publisher of High Society).

As for the bad guys putting this all together, there’s Jack Carter as the big bad Mr. Castaglia, as well as Beano, who you may remember from Deathrow Gameshow, as Tony “Two A Day” Tarentino. This movie feels like it knows way too much about the dark side of Los Angeles, what with Jeremy in the cast and Big G being played by Bill Gazzarri.

So Gazzari’s…

The three hundred feet or so on Sunset Boulevard that started at Gazzarri’s and ended at the Rainbow and the Roxy Theatre was where rock and roll lived in the 90s (although the place was hot from the 60s on, with The Doors being a house band and the Miss Gazzarri’s Dancers counting Catherine Bach and Barbi Benton as alumni). When Gazzarri died in 1991 and the club closed down in 1993, it was damaged in an earthquake and went through many name changes before becoming the nightclub 1 Oak. If you want to see the club, I recommend The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years. Nearly every major metal band played Gazzarri’s, including longtime house band Van Halen, Ratt, Cinderella, Quiet Riot, Mötley Crüe, Poison, Guns N’ Roses, Warrant and Faster Pussycat, as well as bands you may not know if you didn’t read Hit Parader and Rip! like Shark Island, Hurricane and, if you saw Decline, Odin.

What you’ve seen is pure sleaze. I mean, it’s a woman in prison movie. Would you want it any other way? Why are you watching it if you’re just going to judge me? You’ve read this far. You’re complicit.

You can watch this on Tubi.

MVD REWIND COLLECTION BLU RAY RELEASE: The Bikini Car Wash Company Bubble Feature (1990, 1993)

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This Blu-ray release from the MVD Rewind Collection marks the first high-definition appearance of both features, presented in their original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Because both films were originally shot and edited on standard definition videotape, they’ve been carefully remastered using advanced AI upscaling from 480p to 1080p resolution. Packaged with a collectible slipcover, this release is the definitive way to revisit these irreverent, sun-soaked cult comedies that turned a bucket of water and a bikini into box office gold.

The Bikini Carwash Company (1990): George “Buck” Flower was working on a TV show called Nutz, Yutz and Klutz and it was set in a car wash. He wondered what a movie would be like with attractive women working in a car wash and here we are.

Directed and co-written by Ed Hansen (Takin’ It Off, Takin’ It Off Out West), this starts with Jack McCowan (Joe Dusic) looking for the local Sunshine Car Wash, which he is supposed to manage for his Uncle Elmer (Michael Wright). He meets Melissa Reese (Kristi Ducati, Meatballs 4, Sorceress), makes a date and a business plan. She has plenty of friends who wear swimsuits. Perhaps they can wash cars.

For some reason, things hit a stumbling block when Assistant District Attorney Donovan Drake (Matthew Cory Dunn) and the police show up to try and stop the nearly-naked car spraying. But that’s a minor bump as most of this movie is just breasts on windshields. Seriously, it’s devotion to women buffing and sudsing cars is single-brained.

I mean, there are also butts.

So yes, the car wash is open and Amy (Rikki Brando, Buford’s Beach Bunnies), Sunny (Sara Suzanne Brown, who shows up in the sequel as well as Gregory Dark’s Secret Games 2: The Escort), Tammy Joe (Brook Lynn Page in her only role), Stanley (Eric Ryan), Big Bruce (Scott James) for the ladies and Rita (Neriah Davis, Playboy Playmate of the Month March 1994).

Also: Jim Wynorski shows up.

The Bikini Carwash Company II (1993): What questions remained unanswered by the first movie? So many cars need to be washed, so I guess there’s some reason for this movie, which at least has a different director in Gary Dean Orona, who started a career of sexy movies with this effort.

At least this has a reason to be: the carwash gets so big that a gigantic company buys it and the girls need to raise $4 million in a week to get the car wash back. The carwash women — nearly all of them are back, such as Melissa Reese (Kristi Ducati), Amy (Rikki Brando), Sunny (Sara Suzanne Brown) and Rita (Neriah Davis) are here — decide to sell lingerie on TV to get the cash they need.

I applaud that Melissa has become the CEO and Amy the lawyer. They realize their bodies have power but so do their minds. But sometimes, I wonder why so many of my friends are successes. They can discuss strategy and money and investing. I can at length with no research discuss sex comedies.

I won’t change.

You can get this from MVD.

ARROW VIDEO BOX SET RELEASE: V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal: Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet (1990)

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Junko (Sho Aikawa), a young yakuza in the service of Yoshikawa (Toru Minegishi), just wants to look cool. Then he meets Yumeko (Chikako Aoyama), a runaway sex machine slash narcoleptic who loves guns and stealing cars. They meet when she steals Yoshikawa’s car and soon moves in with him.

Yet duty soon calls. When a member of his crime family is killed by a high-ranking member of the Kazama Family, he’s called on to get revenge. Can he handle it? Well, he always dreamed of being a gangster. Actually being one is an entirely different thing.

This was such a success that Neo Chinpira 2: Zoom Goes the Bullet came out a year later. Director Banmei Takahashi also made Door, and writer Takuya Nishioka wrote Mermaid Legend. They bring to you a world where young people who grew up idolizing cool-looking gangsters in Yakuza films suddenly discover that they have to fill unfillable shoes and do impossible things. A winner.

Neo Chinpira: Zoom Goes the Bullet is just one of the movies in the Arrow Video V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal set. The set includes a newly filmed introduction by Japanese film critic Masak Tanioka, an interview with writer-director Banmei Takahashi and a trailer. You can get this from MVD.

Two movies called Midnight Cabaret (1990 and 2012)

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Midnight Cabaret (1990): Directed and co-written by Pece Dingo, this movie has the kind of cast that I look for, which includes former member of Detective and MacGyver enemy Michael Des Barres and Thom Mathews (Tommy Jarvis!).

This is a musical, strange theatrical play, a Satanic movie, an erotic thriller and a giallo-adjacent — you know, the Italian movies where you have no idea what else to call them, so you say that they’re giallo — film all thrown into a shaker with ice, then covered with bongwater and grain alcohol.

It’s Euro-trash but made at home; like how tariffs will someday soon cause the finest in Euroscum movies to cost too much, except we can never make them at home this good. That said, this tries and often looks like an old music video while it’s throwing vampires with straight razors, a cult that wants to impregnate an actress with the Antichrist and moments that feel sexually ambiguous. It’s something. Whether that something is good is up to you.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Midnight Cabaret (2012): As I was looking for the former movie, I discovered this on YouTube and was so far into it before I realized it was a different movie that I just went with things.

Directed by Donna R. Clark, who wrote it with Peter C. Foster, this is the story of Adam (Brad Hilton), a young man struggling to find acceptance and definitely not getting help in his hometown, where he remembers being bullied at home and at school, his mother killing herself and his brother Todd (Jason Mac) going to prison. Now, he becomes inspired by a drag queen named Eve (Elexius Kelly) and becomes a performer at the Midnight Cabaret, finding a world of drugs, crime and who he is inside.

There’s something in this, a movie that feels trapped in digital video but wanting to break free. I don’t know who it’s for, as there are so many gay slurs that it may turn off those it needs to reach most. But otherwise, it wasn’t an unwelcome watch.

You can watch this on YouTube.

April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama 2025 Primer: Basket Case 2 (1990)

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April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre in Vandergrift, PA on April 25 and 26, 2025. Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included). You can buy tickets at the show, but get there early and learn more here.

The features for Friday, April 25 are the first four A Nightmare On Elm Street movies.

Saturday, April 26 has Frankenhooker, Doom Asylum, Brain Damage and Basket Case 2.

Eight years after Basket Case, Duane Bradley (Kevin Van Hentenryck) and his brother Belial are still alive, despite falling out of a window. They’re kidnapped by Granny Ruth (Annie Ross) and are nursed back to health by her and her granddaughter, Susan (Heather Rattray).

Granny Ruth’s home is filled with what others would call freaks, like Eve, a female version of Belial, with whom he soon falls in love. But Duane still hates his brother and doesn’t want to be surrounded by these people and their deformities. The brothers are separated, but then reporters Marcie (Kathryn Meisle) and Artie (Matt Mitler) find them, wanting to bring them to justice. Belial scars Marcie for life, making her a freak just like him.

On the night Eve and Belial finally make love, Duane tries to run away with Susan, only to learn that she has been pregnant for six years with a creature. He shoves her out the window and sews Belial back onto his body as the film ends. Well, there’s more, but you need to see Basket Case 3: The Progeny.

You can watch this on Tubi.