Is Hollywood out of touch? In 1993, Fay Sommerfield investigated as much for the newsmagazine show she anchored, That Time of the Month. So goes Sex, Shock & Censorship in the 90’s, a made-for-Showtime parody of then-topical targets — mostly among the entertainment industry itself — and presented under the guise of a major network’s then-ubiquitous shows like PrimeTime Live and 20/20. Sommerfield is played by Shelley Long (The Brady Bunch Movie), which dates this special as much as its subjects.

Knowing it’s written by Michael Barrie and James Mulholland, the duo behind 1987’s hysterical sketch film Amazon Women on the Moon, I hoped for something of a satirical close sibling. Initially, I got just that from a pair of fake movie trailers spoofing yuppie-paranoia sex thrillers and killer-babysitter horrors, both cleverly featuring a shot of the great Dan Hedaya (Clueless) shouting through the phone. Occasional cutaways to movie critic Malcolm Maltved allow Paul Benedict (Waiting for Guffman) an impressive showcase for a simultaneous impersonation of Leonard Maltin and Michael Medved.

Faye’s visit to the producer of these pictures (Peter Jurasik, Problem Child), however, falls as flat as day-old Tab. The same goes for a cringeworthy, Ebonics-laden profile of Spike Lee-esque director Butch Jones (MADtv’s Phil LaMarr) of Kiss My Black Butt Productions, as well as a Last Temptation of Christ parody called The Last Supper. It’s flat-out awful, with Jesus (Murphy Brown’s Robert Pastorelli) and his apostles at a mob-style Italian restaurant, where they re-enact some of Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma’s greatest hits.

As Sex, Shock & Censorship shifts its eye and arrows to television, things don’t improve. The one exception is Thinkin’ About Tomorrow, an over-the-top politically correct sitcom about an über-liberal suburban nuclear family. For example, when her young son cheers John Wayne murdering Native Americans, Mom (Newhart’s Julia Duffy) turns off the tube and scolds, “No more pre-Lawrence Kasdan Westerns for you.”

Otherwise, The $49.95 Club, a mix of televangelism and QVC, holds potential, but never achieves it. Ratman & Frisky channels Ren & Stimpy’s cartoon vulgarity with a mouse basically played as a gay-baiting Howard Stern. The best that can be said about the Martin Mull-hosted game show Love Thy Neighbor is that it foretells ABC’s Wife Swap. And who thought a spoof of HBO’s sex-comedy series Dream On was a good idea? It’s not, but has one amusing touch, as a receptionist (Playboy model Lisa Boyle) dances topless, yet the nipple pixelation can’t keep up with her gyrations. The less said about the Vanilla Ice-esque music video by white rapper Stinx on Ice (Alex Winter, Bill & Ted Face the Music) … well, I’ve already said too much.

With National Lampoon’s Favorite Deadly Sins director David Jablin at the helm, Sex, Shock & Censorship moves at a surprisingly sluggish pace for an hour crammed with so many segments. Long makes a terrific host throughout, but her comedic gifts only go so far against weak material that wastes the talents of Robert Hays, Paul Bartel, Curtis Armstrong, Kenneth Mars, Nora Dunn, Tracey Walter, David Naughton, Chris Lemmon, Greg Evigan, Stacey Nelkin, Kimberly Beck, Prof. Irwin Corey and, debatably, Artie Lange. —Rod Lott

Originally intended by Hollywood to star Cyndi Lauper and Dan Aykroyd, the feature film Vibes instead stars Cyndi Lauper and Jeff Goldblum. While both Aykroyd and Goldblum are the quintessential movie nerds, each would have played the character of Nick Deezy very differently, with Goldblum’s being the perfect blend of lost and delirious that the movie needed.

Aykroyd, on the other spectral hand, made a date with The Couch Trip instead.

After meeting in a New York University study on parapsychology — I think — psychics Nick and Sylvia (Lauper) become engrossed in the seemingly drunk Harry (Peter Falk) and his tall tales of mental riches in South America. But with Nick’s memory of objects and Sylvia’s ghost-whispering, they find out it’s just some get-rich-quick scheme, all the while somehow falling in love. Somehow.

Aykroyd, on the other spectral hand, made a date with The Great Outdoors instead.

Once Nick and Sylvia, along with Harry, make it to Ecuador, so does a weird, chubby German guy with a real name made out of baby words I will not type here. As he tries various ways to assassinate them, including a strange sexual imposition from seductress Elizabeth Peña, it turns out to be a plot by an NYU professor (Julian Sands).

Aykroyd, on the other spectral hand, made a date with Caddyshack II instead.

Directed with a heavy hand and a birdbrain toward the weird by Ken Kwapis as his follow-up to Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird, this film is most famous as Lauper’s bid for silver-screen stardom crashed and burned; maybe a better film would be how being in such a mediocre movie would trap her on an Trivial Pursuit: Totally 80s card.

Aykroyd, on the other spectral hand, made a date with My Stepmother Is an Alien instead. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Hoping to follow AIP’s Beach Party to a box-office bonanza, Warner Bros. made its own film following that hit’s formula with one glaring exception: setting it nowhere near a beach. In fact, Palm Springs Weekend posits that each Easter weekend, horny college students from Los Angeles would rather flock to the California desert county for “sex, sand and suds.” Technically speaking, viewers get one out of the three.

That Scorchy Connie Stevens takes second billing as Gayle, an 18-year-old posing as 21. Vying for her affections are rich asshole Eric (Robert Conrad, then fresh from TV’s Hawaiian Eye with Stevens) and Texas good ol’ boy Stretch (Ty Hardin, 1967’s Berserk). Also converging at the same hotel — at which no one has reservations — is L.A.’s top collegiate basketball team, including a lemon-faced, banjo-strumming goofball named Biff (Jerry Van Dyke, TV’s Coach) and a future doctor (Phantom Gunslinger Troy Donahue) who takes kindly to the local chief of police’s daughter, Bunny (a brunette Stefanie Powers, Die! Die! My Darling!).

Directed by Sergeant Dead Head’s Norman Taurog, Palm Springs Weekend packs itself with so many people and so many storylines, it fails to give accurate time to let any of them play out to a point we recognize as “plot.” And that’s okay, because it’s a helluva good time. When your big set piece is Biff accidentally spilling a bottle of detergent into the hotel pool (fulfilling the promise of “suds”), your movie isn’t aiming any higher than the funny bone. In that aspect, the Technicolor fantasy succeeds in matching the genial Beach Party — and we do mean “genial,” not “genital,” as Connie copies Annette by being wound Timex-tight.

But wait — there’s more! Among the mugging, pratfalling fray are an uncredited Linda Gray, Dawn Wells, Bugs Bunny and future Tarzan Mike Henry; a pre-Lost in Space Billy Mumy as a 9-year-old from hell; the great character actor Jack Weston (Fuzz) as the team’s coach; a casino-gigging Modern Folk Quartet singing its big hit (?) about an ox driver; and a bespectacled young man (Mark Dempsey, Valley of the Dragons) who hiccups every time he thinks about sex. If any character does the deed over the Weekend, it’s not apparent. However, with a smile and a wink, Bunny’s cop father (Andrew Duggan, In Like Flint) does insulate he was quite the date rapist in his day. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.