Category: USA Up All Night!

Pandemonium

October 7, 2015October 7, 2015by Jeff Taylor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGzoVybc32U

Pandemonium was the second movie shown on the second episode of USA Up All Night and aired on January 14, 1989. It was a complete departure for Up All Night in that this movie had actual actors in it.

Set in the great state of Indiana at world renown college It Had To Be U where, despite a long history of murders during Cheerleader Camps, a wannabe cheerleader decides to reopen the camp.

And the only person who can save cheerleaders, Mandy, Randy, Candy, Andy, Sandy, and Glenn, is Yo-Yo Man himself, Tommy Smothers, as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and his sidekick, Pee Wee Herman.

It’s meant to be a spoof with gags like Eve Arden playing the warden of a prison. And her name is Warden June. Get it? Like Leave It To Beaver, Ward and June. Get it?

There are escaped convicts and escaped mental patients. And murder. And lots of gags centered around Tommy Smothers’ horse.

But none of that is what’s important about this film.

If you love anything that happened in comedy in the 80s, you owe Pandemonium a debt of gratitude because this movie is directly connected to almost everything that happened on TV or in the movies for the entire decade.

Don’t believe me. How’s this for other projects the actors in this movie also appeared in during the 80s.

Beverly Hills Cop

Back to the Future

Gremlins

Teen Wolf

Clue

Three Amigos

Planes, Trains, & Automobiles

Pee Wee’s Playhouse

Princess Bride

Cheers

Night Court

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Back to School

Private Benjamin

The Dukes of Hazzard

M*A*S*H

Superman II, III, and IV

And so much more.

I also made you a handy infographic displaying all of these connections.

And what more needs to be said about the movie that is the Dark Tower of 80s entertainment? All paths serve the beam, and the beam connects at Pandemonium.

I’m not suggesting that you need to go watch Pandemonium. In fact, that’s actually a small challenge to accomplish. But I am saying that you may not know it, but you owe so much to Pandemonium and don’t really want to live in a world without it.

I Was a Teenage TV Terrorist

September 24, 2015September 24, 2015by Jeff Taylor

https://youtu.be/UGPeew2AcKM

At first glance, I Was a Teenage TV Terrorist, the first movie shown on the January 14, 1989 episode of USA Up All Night appears to be an unfunny hodgepodge of nonsense, but as I’ve begun to discover about the films on Up All Night there’s much more going on here than meets the eye.

To the untrained observer this is the story of Paul Pierce (not THAT Paul Pierce) and Donna Rose, two teenagers who move to New York when Paul’s mother gets finished exercising. She yells at Paul about some stuff, but as none of it makes any sense, the best I can figure is she sent him off to New York to live with his father so she could exercise some more. And Paul, because he has Donna’s phone number it seems, takes her with him.

Paul’s father is the VP of marketing for a television station and immediately gives them both non-descript jobs sorting things and writing other things on a notepad while getting yelled at by their boss. A lady boss. He also gives them a room in a condemned building where they can live.

Through a series of events that aren’t worth remembering, much less explaining, Paul and Donna become fake terrorists, leaving fake bombs made of tampons at the TV station, causing power outages, reversing the vacuum cleaners, and generally causing havoc. This is mostly to get back at their lady boss and at Paul’s dad, largely for being adults, and a little bit for sexual harassment.

Until they are discovered by one of the station’s news anchors, who threatens to turn them into the police as fake terrorists, unless they become real terrorists and do as he says. They kidnap the president of the network, as well as the anchor, on live TV and take them both to the next stage over to decry the media and lay out their demands.

It’s a great way to get caught and arrested, except, Paul had recorded the anchor, and when he played that recording back, the anchor flipped on the real power behind the terrorist plots, Paul’s dad, the VP of Marketing.

Now, on its face, none of this makes any sense at all. Paul’s dad had nothing to do with the tampon bomb plot, or in the pawn shop thievery Paul had been involved in that I didn’t bother to tell you about because it makes less sense than the fake-terrorist-tampon-bomb plot, but it seems Paul’s dad was really running all of this just to get rid of his boss, Mr. Frank Romance. There were a few plot threads about workplace sexual harassment with their first boss, and then with Mr. Romance and Donna, but those turn out to be red herrings.

The key to unlocking the secret to I Was a Teenage TV Terrorist is in listening to the statement the anchor claimed came from the leader of the terrorist organization, The White Glove.

“They call themselves the Collective for a Clear Channel. They will stop at nothing to destroy what they see as the morally corrupt powers that control the entertainment industry. They see Romance Company as one of the most blatant examples of the corruption.”

You get it right?

This film was pure propaganda. Put out by the one company in 1985 who had already glimpsed the future of media deregulation that would begin in seven years. By making this all seem like the deranged work of two teenagers whose strings were being pulled by the sonsofbitches in the marketing department, and using those characters to decry the “morally corrupt powers that control the entertainment industry”…

Hold on. I think I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit here. I think a brief history lesson might be helpful here.

Up until 1992 there were rules in place which limited ownership of radio and tv stations. Under the law one company could not own more than two stations in any given market, and there was, I believe, a cap on total station ownership nationwide, as well as limits to ownership of both the production, distribution, and broadcast sides of the business. And by the business, I mean the industry.

To hear them tell it, the goal of this type of government overreach was to keep a balance in the media and not allow exclusive control of information, news, and entertainment to fall into the hands of a few select corporations.

These were relaxed in 1992 and in 1996, the aptly named Telecommunications Act of 1996 almost completely deregulated media ownership.

But in 1985, the time of I Was a Teenage TV Terrorist, the draconian rules of the morally corrupt government in Washington, D.C. were still in effect. Paul and Donna were just the mouth piece of a movement. A very subtle corporate campaign to get this type of regulation overturned.

Seen as either misguided teenagers, props of corporate interests, or rebels against the media landscape that was raising our children as both parents went to work and left their children at home, alone, Paul and Donna delivered their message. The media is bad. And the people running it are turning your children into mindless terrorists.

And those zombie-creating media-controllers are the senators and congressmen responsible for these laws.

Is it any wonder, that ten years after Paul and Donna kidnapped Mr. Romance and called for a “Clear Channel” that Clear Channel Communications went from owning four stations in Texas and Oklahoma to owning over 70 media companies across the country?

And just in case you missed all the signs that this was the beginning of a coordinated effort at consolidating control of the media under the control of Clear Channel Communications, in 2014 Clear Channel Communications changed their name to iHeartRadio.

Mr. Romance.

iHeartRadio.

Don’t you see!!!!!

You disguise the real message inside 85 minutes of pure idiocy. Cast Walt Wiley, All My Children‘s Jackson Montgomery, as the TV Anchor, and John A. MacKay, Dean from Krush Groove, as Paul’s dad, to add some near-legitimacy. And confuse the issue with sexual harassment overtones.

And suddenly, you’ve planted the seeds of a media deregulation REVOLUTION!

If you can’t see that, you’re either blind, or looking the other way to cash your dividend checks from iHeartMedia.

Sell out.

Stuck on You!

September 18, 2015by Jeff Taylor

https://youtu.be/Oq6ntwLmWQ0

The second movie in my USA Up All Night! series, and the second movie broadcast that first wonderful night is called Stuck On You! and was chosen, as best I can figure, as an endurance test for the 1989 television audience and a challenge to me personally for choosing to do this.

Someone, an angel, I assume, tells God that there’s a problem on earth that they can help with. He doesn’t bother to explain what that problem is, only that Gabriel is the only one around to send, and he’ll probably mess it up. Oh, well. Send him anyway. “After all,” says God. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.”

And then, the cartoon hand of God spins the earth, turns it into an egg, which immediately cracks and births a chicken.

What follows makes an equal amount of sense. And is almost as funny.

Bill and Carol are suing each other for palimony after the dissolution of their POSSLQ situation. Carol punches Bill and the whole courtroom erupts into chaos. There’s a golfer with a club wrapped around his neck, arguing with another golfer, cheerleaders, bowlers, tennis players, a nun gut punching a priest, and a courtroom filled with people who have the word “palimony” taped to their mouths to reinforce Judge Gabriel’s assertion that it’s a word that’s on everyone’s lips these days.

I could present you with example after example of what, I think, are supposed to be jokes, but none of them are better than that one and besides, this movie isn’t about jokes. It isn’t even about love, as it purports to be. No. Stuck on You! is an indictment of the legal system and a condemnation of activist judges.

Judge Gabriel, takes these two into his chambers and proceeds lecture them on the history of love. His use of flashbacks to cavemen, Romans, Columbus, Attila the Hun, Michelangelo, and more to elucidate any number of unclear points, combined with his use of a Barbie and a Ken doll that he makes fight each, and interspersed with Bill and Carol explaining their relationship and what went wrong, also through flashbacks whose primary intent may well have been comedy. Much of it involved Bill’s work at a poultry plant and his desire to increase egg production.

It was clear from the start that Judge Gabriel had no control over the proceedings in his court room. The overcrowded and raucous atmosphere, the filmmaker’s clear indictment of televised courtroom programs of the day, like the People’s Court, and a warning agains the type of media exploitation of the legal process we would see a decade later during the O.J. Simpson trial.

And Gabriel, demonstrating a total lack of understanding of a judge’s role in legal proceedings or a disregard for what was being asked of him as a judge in a palimony suit, took it upon himself to try to get Bill and Carol to see the value of their love for one another and push them into each other’s arms, and thus earning his wings.

Regardless of the underpinnings of Gabriel’s actions, his motives never changed. Bastardize the legal process for his own personal gains. No thought was given to whether these two people should be together. In fact, no instruction was ever given that this was the intent of God or his angel-advisor. As far as the audience knows, Gabriel might be forcing together two people who will give birth to the anti-Christ. Which, also might have been God’s intent here. It’s very hard to say.

What is easy to say, however, is that through Gabriel’s over-reach as a family court judge, anyone awake between 1:00-3:00 am on January 8, 1989 and watching USA was subjected to possibly the worst movie ever made.

The only thing that saved this experience for those viewers is that Cheerleader Beach Party came on both before and after Stuck On You!.

Cheerleaders Beach Party

September 13, 2015September 14, 2015by Jeff Taylor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIIXXPNXHuw

Cheerleaders Beach Party was the first film ever shown as part of the groundbreaking and highly influential television series USA Up All Night. And an inspired choice it was.

In the cutthroat business of big time college football, universities, such as State U, will stop at nothing to put the best team on the field. And Cheerleaders Beach Party functions equally well as a snapshot of late 1970’s cheerleading culture and an indictment of the modern day NCAA.

Despite having a team that seems to be pretty awful, Rambling University Rams Cheerleaders, Sissy, Monica, Toni, and Sheryl love their school, their program, their football players, and playful showers with one another after the game. So much so, that when a strange man in a trench coat comes into the local hangout to talk to three of the Rams best players, the girls get suspicious.

And rightfully so.

The man in the trench coat is Mr. Langley, from State U [In violation of Bylaw 13.1.6]. Everybody knows that Rambling is a second-rate school with an underfunded athletic program, and that a degree from State U carries with it the kind of status that will open doors for the fellas long after graduation. Everybody knows this, but Mr. Langley lays it out anyway. He also lays out an enticing offer.

A week, fully paid for, at the State U conference at Bell Harbor [In violation of Bylaws 13.5, 13.6, 13.7, 13.14.2, and 13.15.1]. If everything goes well, and why wouldn’t it, State U will arrange for a full scholarship, and a “very lucrative living allowance.” [In violation of Bylaw 12.1.2] The corruption is rampant.

And Rambling U’s coach knows it. Rambling is a small school with no recruiting budget. They can’t hope to compete with the big state schools. He knows he’s sunk so he decides to take the team bus and go camping instead of trying to keep his three best players. But he never gets that chance.

These intrepid cheerleaders, knowing how important football is to Rambling U, decide to do the only reasonable thing. Steal the team van and drive to Bell Harbor and sabotage these underhanded, sculduggerous, shenanigans through any means necessary. They are willing to do anything. Even things that don’t involve taking off their tops and sleeping with college athletes. But mostly they plan on taking off their tops and sleeping with college athletes.

It bespeaks their incredible naïveté that they expect to waltz into Bell Harbor, ply their feminine wiles, and convince their boys to stay at Rambling, as well as successfully recruit the best players from State U over to Rambling. Did it never occur to them that if State U were willing to break the rules by offering cash to recruits, that they might also have girls of their own willing to take off their tops and sleep with college athletes to secure the services of these fine student-athletes on the gridiron?

Well it should have. Because State U had dates for the guys lined up with Ginger, Sugar, and Honey [In violation of Bylaw 13.6.1] even before the Ram U cheerleaders were done skinny-dipping in the ocean, which was of course the first thing they did upon arriving in Bell Harbor.

It’s easy to think of our four girls as the heroes of this story, and maybe they are, but it should be pointed out that at this point they decide try to entice the best player at State U, and the dumbest player at State U to transfer to Rambling by having sex with them [Again, Bylaw 13.6.1]. Monica takes Mitch Stevens, the hotshot QB and biology student. The other three girls take Stanley Krause.

First they take Stanley to their tent [13.6.1]. And then they take him [13.6.1]. One at a time [13.6.1]. Until he decides to transfer schools. This was going to be easy. If it only took three of them seducing each player to transfer, this would be over in no time.

But if recruiting were easy, schools in 2015 wouldn’t spend $700,000 a year to recruit and sign 3 players. These cheerleaders stopped at nothing. They spiked punch and gave hash brownies [In violation of Bylaws 13.6 and 31.2.3] to all the attendees at a State U cocktail party, they pretended to be ghosts [No bylaw found regarding impersonating ghosts. This seems to be legal.] to scare the Rambling players into getting away from the horrible people at State U. And when those things didn’t work, they threw their own beach party where they did a strip tease for everyone in attendance [13.6.1].

And still, when the State U coach showed up and yelled at the players for their low moral fiber, everyone left the party to be fine upstanding young men who sleep with strippers named after spices and sweeteners. It wasn’t until the girls gave everyone crabs in their jock straps that the Rambling U guys, plus Mitch and Stanley, realized, somehow, even though it was the girls from Rambling U that gave them the crabs, that State U was immoral and only wanted them for their football playing abilities and not for their academic acumen.

And that was the last straw. All of them chose Rambling U over the money, perks, strippers, and has brownies of State U.

It was the classic David v. Goliath story of small school overcoming the superior resources of the big school. Only instead of flinging a rock, David gave everyone crabs.

That this elucidation of illegal recruiting practices in NCAA football, released in 1978, has been forgotten, and that college and universities continue to throw money at recruits, as well as, one could assume, prostitutes and hash brownies, is borderline criminal.

Thank you, USA Up All Night for fighting the good fight and exposing the underbelly of college athletics, even though we all refused to listen for so long.