USA Up All Night is only something I recently discovered and missed out on watching as it is (obviously) an American thing – something we would never have gotten here in the land of Australia, especially back in 1989, when it started.
If you are like me, you may not know what this show was.
Then again, if you were lucky, you may have fond memories of watching movie late at night when this show aired.
Either way, it’s time to dive into this classic piece of TV and film history.
USA Up All Night
USA Up All Night was basically a show with segments where the host would introduce the movies – usually a B-grade or cult classics – and then make silly comments before and after the commercials.
The video below shows typical commentary from one the hosts, the late, Gilbert Gottfried (the other hosts through the decade this show was on the air were Caroline Schlitt (for a short time), and Rhonda Shear.
There were two versions of this show that ran simultaneously – one on Friday nights (hosted first by Caroline Schlitt, briefly, and then by Rhonda Shear), and one on Saturday nights (hosted by Gilbert Gottfried from New York City).
Now Showing
USA Up All Night aired from 11pm at night until the early mornings and would show two or three B-grade or cult classics back-to-back (depending on which year you were tuning in – they changed the formatting a bit throughout the years).
So, what movies aired during the show’s run?
List of Movies Shown
Well, luckily two guys – Letterboxd users Vahan_Nisanian and jeffrouk – managed to put together a pretty close to exhaustive list of movies that the show aired throughout the years.
Letterbox’d a visual list of them, but you can check out the PDF of the original list, as well, which includes the years and episodes each of the movies were aired. I also have a download of that list you can just grab.
You can head over to YouTube and see over 100 videos of Rhonda Sheer introducing the movies on that particular night. Not sure I could sit through that many in a row, but you could always have a movie night and show her introductions before watching them yourself.
In fact, I might try that myself.
In the meantime, here is Gilbert Gotfried on USA Up All Night when showing Roddy Piper’s Hell Come to Frogtown.
And just to wet your appetite, here is a promo video for the show itself, featuring Gilbert Gotfried.
I am not sure I would have been up all night watching these movies when I was younger, but it would have been treat to fall asleep watching some of these – and then waking up half-way through another.
Over to You
Did you ever watch USA Up All Night? Let me know down in the comments below.
