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Musician and actor discusses bringing a ‘90s cult TV favorite back to life for the YouTube generation
John Brennan — the musician and actor, not the guy who used to run the Central Intelligence Agency — is pretty much the perfect person to have on set for the relaunch of Up All Night, the ‘90s cult favorite cable TV staple recently revived as an all new Kings of Horror Youtube series.
After all, he grew up watching the USA program anchored by Rhonda Shear and the late Gilbert Gottfried when he was a kid.
“Right now I’m 46 so it was the prime time for me to be a young man watching the show — a young boy, in fact,” Brennan recounted. “I remember specifically the image of Rhonda sitting with a Jason Voorhees-type in a hockey mask … horror movies really scared me, and sitting there going ‘wait a second, this is funny, but she’s with the killer.” I couldn’t really put two and two together, but as I got older I sort of understood.”
The original Up All Night run spanned from 1989 to 1998. By the time the show was cancelled, its analog footprint was north of 900 episodes.
“Just because we’re on Kings of Horror doesn’t mean that we won’t do things like they used to do on USA’s Up All Night,” Brennan said. “Like comedy films, action films, they’re looking at all that stuff to sort of spread the love to different genres that Up All Night had honored in the past — so that’s pretty exciting to see maybe something like Vice Academy or maybe some Andy Sidaris movies on there, like Hard Ticket To Hawaii.”
Brennan is no stranger to B-movie and cult horror fans. He’s contributed to the soundtracks of several noteworthy Troma releases, showed up behind the scenes and in front of the camera for Shudder’s The Last Drive-In With Joe Bob Briggs streaming program (where he was responsible for a tidal wave of memorable musical moments, including the show’s very theme song) and made appearances in flicks like The Killer’s Requiem (2018) and Curse of the Weredeer (2023), among many others. So even if you don’t necessarily recognize his face, you’ll certainly recognize his voice — or vice versa, depending on your filmgoing and streaming tastes.
The Up All Night relaunch made its debut on Oct. 25. The YouTube premiere, hosted by the iconic and indefatigable Shear, revolved around a double feature of Hell House LLC (2015) and Hayride (2012) and featured a smorgasbord of special guests, running the gamut from Sleepaway Camp’s Felissa Rose to Home Shopping Network regular Kerry McNally to The Bachelor contestant Mary Delgado.
And of course, Brennan was there, too — not just to provide the kooky soundtrack, but making a guest appearance as a medium wearing an outfit suspiciously similar to a McDonald’s Grimace costume (sans the head, of course.)
“It’s been overwhelmingly positive in terms of everybody loving what the content was and the fact that Rhonda’s back,” Brennan said of the Boo Bash special. “At the end of the second film, Rhonda did a nice tribute to Gilbert and people were telling me they were emotional over it to the point of shedding actual tears.”
Up All Night returns on Saturday, Nov. 22, for a special Thanksgiving edition. A follow-up Christmastime special is slated for Saturday, Dec. 20, with both episodes streaming live at the Kings of Horror Youtube channel beginning at 10 p.m. EST.
“I don’t know the movies yet, I’m looking forward to seeing what those movies are,” Brennan said. “But I do know the idea for the Thanksgiving special is sort of a ‘Scream Queen Academy,’ where the legendary Tiffany Shepis will teach a few up and coming scream queens how to be a scream queen.”
Brennan said the first official season of Up All Night will kick off in January 2026.
“It’s essentially going to be one episode every two weeks,” he said. “So there will be two episodes in January, two episodes in February, two episodes in March, etc.”
Brennan said he’s going to have a recurring role on the series as Shear’s upstair neighbor.
“Let’s just say I’m a little eccentric,” he states with a laugh. “Who pops in and out and talks to Rhonda, and I hope I don’t get too nefarious because I want to keep my character as a fan of Rhonda, not as like a stalker kind of person. But you never know, my character might steal things from Rhonda’s apartment and sell them on eBay just to pay my rent, things like that. Fun stuff, not evil.”
Joining Brennan on the Up All Night crew is another The Last Drive-In alumnus, production designer and actor Yuki Nakamura. The two have co-hosted Yuki and John’s Podcast Buffet — and its Patreon affiliate — for the last three years.
“Yuki, obviously, comes from Japan and came to America to pursue his dreams of working in movies and I come from the East Coast, from New York, and I did all I could to pursue my dreams to work in entertainment and movies and all that sort of stuff,” Brennan said. “But when we come together, it sort of is a meeting of East and West.”
Brennan describes Nakamura as “an endless well of surprising” perspectives and life experiences.
“There will be times when I’m talking to Yuki and just in a random conversation, he’ll be like ‘oh yeah, I worked with Quentin Tarantino,’” Brennan said. “Florence Henderson kissed him on the lips, Ed Asner kissed him on the lips — Yuki is a very kissable man.”
Brennan described the songwriting process for Up All Night.
“Basically, Rhonda and her writer Matt Maisto come up with a character and I throw in a few ideas here and there,” he said. “Then they just write in, sort of, like ‘a song happens here.’”
Brennan said he’s already mulling ideas for songs based on upcoming special guests.
“I also have a few songs that I have in my back pocket that I never got to use anywhere else,” he said. “Like, I really want to do a werewolf line dance number — I think that would kill.”
The overall tone of Up All Night is far campier than The Last Drive-In, Brennan said.
“Rhonda likes to do a lot of skits, a lot of comedy and have a party, like a Pee-Wee’s Playhouse type of vibe,” he said. “I sort of always skewed on the campy side of things — I love surreal comedy, things that are goofy. So getting to do this with Rhonda is sort of a dream.”
Up All Night may have its root in the ‘90s, but Brennan said the revamped show definitely has a more modern aesthetic.
“I think that Rhonda’s bringing her knowledge of what she’s lived through since Up All Night has been off the air and sort of blending it into that perfect marriage of nostalgia and modern sensibilities,” he said. “I think we will continue to grow that aesthetic as we move forward.”
Brennan said he’s honored to add his own personal flavor to a litany of iconic franchises and brands — Troma, then The Last Drive-In and now Up All Night.
“I learned so much from Lloyd Kaufman, not just from a business angle but how to improvise,” he said. “Joe Bob, I learned that sometimes the writing is the key, the writing is the main focus and that a really well-honed script is what it’s all about.”
With a colleague like Shear, Brennan said he’s learned that sets can actually be fun.
“Even though it’s all pre-planned, you can have spontaneity,” he said.
Outside of the Up All Night gig, Brennan said he’s been hard at work on his own company — Goblin-In-Law, LLC — where he’s collaborated with roughly a dozen writers on various horror scripts.
“We want to shoot a lot of analog stuff, like VHS, Hi8, MiniDV,” he said. “So that’s all coming to fruition and we’re entering 2026, which is sort of going to be our production year.”
Brennan — who uses the handle @badtechno across the social media cosmos — has a musical catalog that stretches all the way back to the late, late ‘90s. Scour the recesses of YouTube long enough and you’ll eventually stumble across deep cuts like his music video for “Hot Dog Freeze Heat.”
Naturally, the songbird behind the immortal “Synth Farts EP” and the “Spookies Rap” isn’t showing any signs that he’s running out of musical inspiration anytime soon.
“I would love to write a Bikini Carwash Company song,” Brennan said. “Yuki and his car, we’re going to soak them down with a bunch of bikini car wash women to my disco jingle.”
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