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).