From 1981 to 1988, the then-fledgling USA Network aired Night Flight on Friday and Saturday nights. Four hours long, the show specialized in cult films, music videos, and low- budget garbage—the drive-ins from the 1950s and 1960s transferred to the cable age.
Being in my teens at the time, Night Flight was a staple of my weekend nights; car-less and trapped in the family room, I landed squarely within the show's demographic, sharing viewership with shut-ins and stoners. It was during one of these weekends that I'm pretty sure I saw The Revenge of the Teenage Vixens from Outer Space for the first time.
Produced on a microbudget, Revenge of the Teenage Vixens is ludicrously dubbed, ineptly directed, and supposedly took four long years to complete. The story, such as it is, involves jazzercised aliens from another world, who arrive on our innocent planet looking for fashion tips and wayward teens to turn into vegetables. (No, really.) Lame jokes are cracked, bras are removed with telekinesis, and nudity is promised but never delivered.
With a cast list littered with long-ago-forgotten, if ever memorable, names such as Lisa Schwedop, Howard Scott, and Amy Crumpacker, Revenge of the Teenage Vixens, like that other Night Flight "classic" A Polish Vampire in Burbank, retains some of its cheap-o charm. (It also has a certain amount of local relevance, as filmmakers Jeff Ferrell and Michelle Lichter met while living in Seattle.) Revisiting the flick two decades later, what's missing is the experience of watching surreptitiously with your friends after your parents have gone to bed. On its own, Revenge of the Teenage Vixens borders on the unwatchable—the performances are stiff, the special effects are budgeted at a buck-fifty, and the third act is complete nonsense. But as I watched it, I was taken back to the days when the family VCR was a top-load, the home computer plugged into the TV, and a Saturday night spent watching trash on Night Flight was a weekly routine. Good times. 
Also new to DVD this week: Berlin Alexanderplatz (Criterion, $124.95), Killer of Sheep (Milestone, $39.95), La Vie en Rose (Warner Home Video, $27.95), Innocence (Image Entertainment, $24.99), This Is England (IFC, $19.95), Four Pink Classics from Masura Konuma (Kino, $29.95 each).
