EDITOR’S NOTE: The Girl That I Want aired on USA Up All Night on January 4 and 5 and  September 6, 1991; April 11, 1992; April 2 and November 6, 1993.

Director David DeCoteau is made for USA Up All Night. In this movie, he’s showing us all about Amy (Elizabeth Kaitan, Vice Academy 5, Silent Madness), a high school girl who feels like she isn’t as pretty as the other girls. Only in an 80s teen sex comedy could Elizabeth Kaitan be the not attractive girl. She gets Teri (Linnea Quigley) and Lisa (Karen Russell, Vice Academy) to make her over and yes, when you have to compare the relative attractiveness of these women, you regress to being a teenage boy and are overcome by just how brain wrecking each is, but let’s be honest, Linnea Quigley forever.

At the same time, her boyfriend Scott (Steven Craig Daugherty) is failing school so he needs to study hard for a test, so hard that his father (Burt Ward) thinks that his son is gay because he spends so much time with his friend Hubie (Marcus Vaughter). That’s kind of amazing that this movie has so many homophobic moments seeing that DeCoteau was directing it. Then again, it’s all in fun, I guess.

Maybe not. The name he used on this movie was Ellen Cabot, which he told Draculina was the name of a girlfriend he had a bad breakup with in high school. Whenever he made a bad movie, he used her name. However, he has changed this story to say that it was a pseudonym to cover up his homosexuality.

The cast is fun with Lyle Waggoner as the coach, Kitten Natividad as a Spanish teacher and Deanna Lund as Amy’s mom. Yes, the mom from Elves. I will never not mention that movie.

For some reason, this movie has a lot of heart. I wish there were more movies where the stars of Murder Weapon did makeovers for shy high school girls who really love their boyfriends. It seems like it should be a total teen sex comedy but it ends up being so sweet.

You can download this episode from the Internet Archive.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Getting Lucky aired on USA Up All Night on May 24 and 25 and December 6, 1991; July 11, 1992; April 2 and July 31, 1993; August 19, 1994 and February 26, 1995.

Bill Higgins (Steven Cooke) is saving up for medical school by acting as the basketball team’s towel boy. He’s also has a crush on Krissi (Lezlie Z. McCraw), who he ends up pouring spoiled milk all over. So he quits that job and goes back to recycling for a living and finds Lepkey (Garry Kluger) the leprechaun, who gives Bill the three wishes you expect.

Those wishes include a date with Krissi that has her leave him for her boyfriend, a new car wish gets Bill a Pinto and then, as Tony tries to sexually assault Krissi — this movie got strange quick — Bill asks to be transformed in a way that he can protect her. So he becomes a cat. Later, he gets shrunken down into her underwear and somehow still gets to be her boyfriend and eventual husband, but first, he has to fight that rapist boyfriend again.

Michael Paul Girard directed and wrote this, but wanted to call it Wish Me Luck. Getting Lucky was remade, sort of, under that title in 1995 by Phillip J. Jones. Girard also directed Witchcraft 7: Judgement Hour, Witchcraft IX: Bitter Flesh and the recent Over-sexed Rugsuckers from Mars.

If you’ve seen Fraternity Demon, the entire opening of that movie is cut from scenes from this movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cyber-C.H.I.C. aired on USA Up All Night on January 6 and June 24, 1995.

Directed and written by Ed Hansen (whose career includes Takin’ It Off, Party Favors, Party Plane, The Bikini Car Wash Company, Hell’s Belles, The Bikini Car Wash Company and editing episodes of The Bullwinkle Show and 9 1/2 Weeks) and Jeffrey Mandel (Super Force and way to bury the lead, the writer and director of Elves), Cyber-C.H.I.C. (or Robo-C.H.I.C. which is the better name and even better, itw as called Thunder-Tronic in Germany) is about Dr. Sigmoid Von Colon (Kip King) creating Robo-C.H.I.C. (Kathy Shower, Playboy‘s Playmate of the Month for May 1985 and Playmate of the Year for 1986., who appeared in a lot of stuff, including The Further Adventures of Tennessee Buck and Frankenstein General Hospital; later in the movie Jennifer Daly takes on the role) to fight the forces of bad.

In this movie, that bad would be Harry Truman Hodgkins (Burt Ward), a nuclear bomber planting death traps all over town. This movie is so bad that Shower, despite an Executive Producer credit, left before it was done. The one good thing is the joke that the biker gang is called Satan’s Onions because of a printing problem.

In case you wondered, C.H.I.C. stands for Computerized Humanoid Intelligent Clone.

Also: Kip King was Chris Kattan’s dad.

The idea of this is right. It was better done in Steel and Lace, so I hear, as well as Programmed to Kill, The Demolitionist, Lady Battle Cop, Robotrix and my beloved Vice Academy 2 and BimboCop.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Caged Fury aired on USA Up All Night on December 18, 1992; February 13 and November 26, 1993 and August 13, 1994. This movie is by request of Mike Justice, who said, “Please tell me you’re gonna cover that one. I caught that one night, and for years I’d describe it to people (girls escape from prison and find out they were being held under Hollywood blvd) and nobody believed me. I literally thought I’d made it up.”

At one point in this movie, the female inmates begin to fight and Crazy Daisy (Tiffany Million, once a GLOW girl and later an adult star) says, “I 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 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 daddy (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 sent off to Honeywell Prison, which is where this movie really gets going. You know exactly all of the women in prison moments you’re going to receive 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 the aforementioned Decline, Odin.

This movie is pure sleaze. I mean, it’s a women 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.

Small-time criminal Wah Dee (Andy Lau) is enlisted by his boss Trumpet (Tommy Wong) to be the getaway driver for a heist which, of course, goes completely wrong. Dee takes Jo Jo (Jacklyn Chien-Lien Wu) hostage but the bosses order her to be killed. Instead, they escape together and fall in love while being chased by the cops and the crooks.

Directed by Benny Chan and produced by Johnnie To and Ringo Lam, A Moment of Romance brings Hong Kong alive, both in its abandoned places and its neon-lit night, as two lovers from different worlds realize that perhaps they would be safer by leaving each other yet unable to do so.

This movie was so essential that Andy Lau got the nickname of his character from it, Wah Dee. It also has the kind of ending that you expect from the New Hollywood or the Hong Kong New Wave. It’s romantic at the very same time that it is heartbreaking.

A Moment of Romance II was released in 1993 featuring a new storyline. Benny Chan and Jacklyn Wu returned as director and lead actress respectively with Aaron Kwok as the male star A third and final installment, A Moment of Romance III, was released in 1996 with Johnnie To, producer of the first two films, directing and Lau and Wu being reunited.

Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings, the Radiance Films blu ray release has a 4K restoration of the film from the original camera negative, as well as an archival audio interview with Benny Chan; In Love and Danger: HK Cinema Through A Moment of Romance, a new visual essay by critic and Asian cinema expert David Desser; commentary by Asian cinema expert Frank Djeng; newly translated English subtitles by Dylan Cheung; a trailer; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing on the iconic cast and crew by critic Sean Gilman and a profile of Benny Chan by Tony Williams, co-editor of Hong Kong Neo Noir. You can get it from MVD.

Some consider this the fifth film in the Mr. Vampire series. It stars Lam Ching-ying as Uncle Feng. Seeing as how he’s the hero — he’s also in the second and third movies in the Mr. Vampire films, as well as Vampire vs, Vampire and Encounters of the Spooky Kind II — you can figure out why this movie is tied to those films.

Uncle Feng is a retired policeman leading a quiet and beautiful life in Tung Ping Chau who still occasionally reports to his boss, Chief Inspector Ma (Wu Ma). His next door neighbor asks Feng to make the trip to Hong Kong to bring back the body of her daughter. She was a stewardess who the cops shot after she was accused of smuggling drugs. That’s when he learns the truth: she was already dead when the cops shot her, the thrall of a Japanese sorceress (Michiko Nishiwaki, Passionate Killing in the Dream, In the Line of Duty 3) who is killing others and enslaving them as undead workers for her drug business.

Feng has to team with a young cop, Sargent Yam (Wilson Yam), and find the secret altar of the Sorceress and stop her with his Taoist magic. Director Stephen Tung combines comedy, wild magic fights and martial arts into one incredibly entertaining film.

That said — there is one moment of near-cat abuse, so when you see a black cat on screen and you are easily upset by animals in danger, look away. It’s not comfortable watching a cat get nearly hung, even though one hopes it was well taken care of when the scene was over.

The last twenty minutes of this movie are completely out of control and as a fan of both Lam Ching-ying and Michiko Nishiwaki, I couldn’t help but be in a great mood after this was over. Just total fun and a great mix of modern cop action and traditional magic and martial arts.

As always, 88 Films has the best looking releases both on your shelf and in your blu ray player. Extras include a limited edition slipcase and double sided poster, audio commentary by Frank Djeng and Marc Walkow, an alternative Taiwanese cut with a different score, an interview with Tung Wei, an image gallery and a trailer. You can get it from MVD.

The Bonfire of the Vanities was a bestseller.

The movie, well, not so much.

It was a mess from the beginning.

Tom Wolfe’s book was identified with the excesses of the 80s.

The movie, well, pretty much the same thing.

The big problem is that the book doesn’t have a likable or even sympathetic character. It’s about Wall Street bond trader Sherman McCoy getting lost in the unfamiliar Bronx after sleeping with his mistress Maria Ruskin. On his way back to his safe home, he hits a young black man named Henry Lamb. British journalist Peter Fallow and black religious and political icon Reverend Bacon use the comatose boy for their own financial and personal reasons as McCoy struggles to save what’s left of his life.

Sherman McCoy should not be anyone that we like and he should not be played by Tom Hanks. Nor should Peter Fallow be Bruce Willis. And when the studio realized that there wasn’t a single heroic black character — Wolfe’s book had been derided for its racism many times — so they made Judge Kovitsky into Judge White and got Morgan Freeman to play him.

What’s even wilder is that De Palma allowed author Julie Salamon to follow him on the set and gave her unlimited access. Did he know that this would be a flop? Or was he excited to share the world of making films? Her book The Devil’s Candy goes deep to break down everything that went bad.

Oh the problems, from Melanie Griffith showing up with new breasts ruining a lot of continuity to Bruce Willis telling other actors how they should play their scenes, often at the expense of De Palma. But even though it was a rough shoot, the studio still thought it was going to be a hit. It tested well, it did better with reshoots and then it made $15 million on a $47 million budget.

Salamon told The Guardian that the book was the end of her movie critic career. “For me personally, writing about Bonfire really was the beginning of the end of my career as a film critic, because after spending the time, day in and day out for almost a year watching this process, I found it harder and harder to write negative film reviews.”

Leonard Maltin gave it a BOMB rating but hey, I’m sure that De Palma could not give a shit. He’s always maintained that he was making his version of the story and if you want the book, read the book. He owes up to the mistakes he made, but it certainly didn’t end his directing career.

EDITOR’S NOTE: You can read another review of this movie here.

I can’t even tell you how excited I was about Robot Jox in 1990. It seemed like it was in every issue of Starlog and I kept wondering, when would one of the video stores in my hometown get it? It seemed like a live action Transformers movie and according to director Stuart Gordon, that was the idea: “While there have been animated cartoons based on these giant robots, no one has ever attempted a live-action feature about them. It struck me that it was a natural fantasy for the big screen–and a terrific opportunity to take advantage of the special effects that are available today.”

Gordon worked with special effects artist David W. Allen to create test footage for the investors for this movie and that ended up becoming the opening title sequence. Initially budgeted at $7 million — it grew to $10 million — Robot Jox was the most expensive film Empire Pictures production.

Science fiction author Joe Haldeman wrote the story with Gordon but the two battled throughout. The writer wanted a serious movie about embattled soldiers and the director wanted a Cold War movie with big special effects. Even the title was debated, as Haldeman wanted The Mechanics and Gordon wanted Robojox.

Haldeman wrote that Gordon later recognized that the author was “writing a movie for adults that children can enjoy” while Gordon had been “directing a movie for children that adults can enjoy.”

Despite those issues and Empire’s bankruptcy causing delays, I still fondly remember this film, as when I finally got to see it, I really enjoyed it. Obviously, Guillermo del Toro did, as the way the robots are controlled and how the pilots are trained are so close to his Pacific Rim.

Only the American Market and the Russian Confederation have survived fifty years after a nuclear war. They decide all conflicts by having giant robots battle as robot jox control them. Alexander (Paul Koslo) is the villain and has murdered his last nine opponents thanks to a spy giving him special weak points. But now he comes up against another fighter who is at his tenth match — when robot jox can retire — Achilles (Gary Graham). Their battle will be for the rights to Alaska and there’s plenty of pressure.

Achilles trains while studying with robot designer Doc Matsumoto (Danny Kamekona, Sato from The Karate Kid Part II) and strategist Tex Conway (Michael Alldredge), the only robot jox to win all ten of his fights. There’s also an entire training center where new genetically engineered robot jox like Athena (Anne-Marie Johnson) are training to replace Achilles.

During the battle, Alexander goes wild and fires a weapon into the audience. Alexander tries to stop it but his mech crashes into the stands, killing three hundred or more of the fans. Shaken by this, he refuses to come back and fight again when the match is ruled a draw.

All sorts of chicanery ensures and Athena drugs Achilles, who comes back for that one big fight, and she gets decimated by Alexander. That leads to a second battle between Alexander and Achilles, who comes back. It even ends up in a one on one fistfight and after all the horror that the Russian pilot has visited on, well, the entire cast of this movie, they bump fists to show sportsmanship.

This was followed by Robot Wars and footage — Full Moon is big on recycling — is also in Crash and Burn.

In the world of Robot Jox, you never say “Good luck.” You say, “Crash and burn.”

I just want 15 year old me to know that in the future, I own this movie and we can watch it any time that we want.

Robot Jox is part of the Enter the Video Store — Empire of Screams box set. Extras include two archive audio commentaries (one with director Stuart Gordon and a second with associate effects director Paul Gentry, mechanical effects artist Mark Rappaport and stop-motion animator Paul Jessell), new interviews with Gary Graham and Anne-Marie Johnson as well as a new appreciation of stop motion animator David Allen, an archival interview with actor Paul Koslo, the original sales sheet and production notes, a trailer and image galleries, including behind-the-scenes stills courtesy of associate effects director Paul Gentry. You can get this set from MVD.

Jigoku is a samurai outlaw with a bounty on his head that Zatoichi, Cyrano de Bergerac and Yuri the Pistol is out to collect. Except she’s the one who nearly catches him. And then he falls in love with her. And he has a bigger thing than saving his head on his mind. He’s looking for a golden sword that’s inside a cave. It’s more than a weapon. It’s the key to Zipang, the city of gold ruled by the love-hating Golden King, who has a woman trapped in an ice cave. And her lover has been released when the sword was freed. And oh yeah, there’s also an army of blue ninjas who want to steal the golden sword.

If you’re confused, don’t worry. Zipang packs a lot in a short time. And then throws in lots more.

Have you ever played Kabuki: Quantum Fighter on the old NES? Then you know this movie, even if you didn’t know it, because it was the Americanized tie-in game for a movie that would never be released in the West.

As he kills nearly 150 people (146, if you want to know), Jigoku discusses his nine swords, even if we don’t see all of them. He’s got a samurai sword, a sword that shoots its blade, one that has two blades, a really long samurai sword and even one with a spinning top on it.

Director and writer Kaizô Hayashi also made To Sleep As to Dream, another movie that is just as delightfully strange as this. Sure, you can watch this as a swords versus ninjas treasure hunting movie, but there are deep themes inside, like wondering what love is and the dangers of only caring for things. Also, for some reason, everyone looks like they’re wearing street fashion and we have no idea where in time or space this is all happening.

This is a film with human-sized kites, ninjas with high tech goggles, mechanical claws and guns, as well as monsters, a friendly baby elephant, a samurai who knows how to use a rocket launcher and so much joy in every frame that you just can’t believe it’s happening.

I read a review on Letterboxd where someone said it was too long and kind of boring and I wonder why that person hates magic so much.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.