Awesomely Shitty Movies: Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

Welcome to another edition of Awesomely Shitty Movies, here at Enuffa.com, where I examine the pros and cons of an entertaining-but-stupid movie.  Oft-times it'll be an old film I liked at the time but later discover to be pretty shabby.

Such is the case with today's entry, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey!

In 1988 the world was introduced to two lovable dunderheads with a taste for hard-rockin' music, Bill S. Preston, esquire, and Ted "Theodore" Logan, who as it turns out were destined to change the world with their special brand of heavy metal, if only they could pass their History exam.  With the help of a futuristic mentor and a time traveling phone booth, these two dummies saved the day and secured their future.

Fast-forward three years and our (second) favorite pair of dopey cinematic metal dudes were back, this time fighting for their very lives against evil robot clones created by Chuck De Nomolos, a futuristic heavy with designs on retroactively altering the timeline.  Hmm, evil robots sent back in time to kill the protagonist?  That premise sounds oddly familiar.

So what worked about this silly sequel and what didn't?  Let's zoom in for a closer look...



The Awesome

Cool Premise/Lofty Concepts

Where Excellent Adventure had a very lighthearted, pretty small-scope time travel premise (Bill and Ted need to travel through time and recruit various historical figures for their high school history project to avoid flunking out and derailing their rise to global fame), the second film ups the ante by having the aforementioned evil robots actually kill our heroes, allowing the filmmakers to show us what heaven and hell look like.  Conceptually this is a really fun story with lots of room for imaginative visuals and afterlife-related gags.  Bill and Ted spend over half the movie as wayward spirits and we get to explore various mythical and surrealistic locations with them.



George Carlin

My all-time favorite standup comedian returns as Bill & Ted's futuristic mentor Rufus, and while his comedic talents are sadly wasted in this franchise, he's always a welcome onscreen addition.

George was the best

Awesomely Shitty Movies: Tremors

Welcome to another Awesomely Shitty Movies, here at Enuffa.com!

Today's movie is the 1990 horror-comedy Tremors, directed by Ron Underwood (of City Slickers) and starring Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward.  Tremors takes place in a tiny Nevada settlement called Perfection (population 14) that gets attacked from below the ground by four gigantic sandworm-like monsters that reach through the turf and pull down anything that seems appetizing.  After the only road in or out of town gets blocked by a rock avalanche, the survivors must find a way to the mountains to avoid getting eaten.

I'll level with ya - the word "shitty" doesn't really apply to Tremors.  There's very little about this film I don't like, but I'm including it because it's just a really fun, silly B-movie, one I would describe as a "great piece of crap."  So no offense meant, Tremors fans.  I'm really just here to talk about the film's merits as an old-school piece of drive-in fare.



The Awesome

Val & Earl

Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward have tremendous chemistry as our dual protagonists.  Earl is the grizzled pragmatist, while Val is still holding out hope for a better situation and a new love interest who fits exactly his description of an ideal woman.  Together they're the brains and muscle of the town of Perfection, keeping everyone's stuff in order and doing whatever odd jobs they're needed for.  They're also the audience's guides through this adventure.

Every town should have a Val & Earl

Michael Gross

I've been a huge Michael Gross fan since his Family Ties run, where he played the optimistic, sentimental dad.  For most fans of the show Michael J. Fox was the star, but I always found Stephen Keaton funnier.  Here Michael is a very different character - an over-the-top gun enthusiast/survivalist who never met a firearm he didn't like (or purchase, judging by his vast arsenal).  While Stephen Keaton and Burt Gummer could not be more diametric opposites, Gross delivers excellent performances in both cases.

Stephen Keaton rocks the shit in this movie

Movies of Disbelief: Signs (2002)

Welcome to another Movies of Disbelief, where I examine one particular issue with an otherwise good film and why it irritates me so.  Today's subject, the 2002 alien invasion film Signs.

M. Night Shyamalan.  Has there ever been a more divisive film director?  Or more accurately, has there ever been a film director whose output has ranged from "universally lauded" to "fiery garbage on a stick?"  M. Night burst on the scene seemingly out of nowhere with his third film The Sixth Sense (I legit had no idea he'd made two other movies until I looked it up for this article), which proved a smash-hit and popularized the mindfuck ending like no other film had.  He followed it up with the mostly acclaimed but less successful Unbreakable, an intimate twist on the superhero genre (which of course spawned a trilogy nearly twenty years later), and then it was time for Signs.

Starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix, Signs was another "up close and personal" take on a genre film, this time The Alien Invasion picture.  Gibson is a widowed ex-minister-turned-farmer who finds a crop circle in his field, seemingly left by an alien presence, and soon other signs of an invasion spring up, including strange noises, animals exhibiting abnormal behavior, and lights in the sky.  Eventually news reports surface of alien sightings, leading to one of the great monster reveals, an amateur video taken at a kids' birthday party (This moment is chillingly effective).  The film expertly builds suspense throughout its entire running time, leading to a final showdown between Gibson's family (brother and two kids) and one of the creatures......and then it falls apart totally and completely in the last fifteen minutes, when it turns out the aliens are allergic to water.  Yeah that's right, simple, old fashioned water.

Dude, scary as fuck.

But that's not even what has my goat about this movie.  Don't get me wrong, it's annoying as all hell that an advanced species capable of interstellar travel - one that would've necessarily taken atmospheric readings before landing on any planet, to ensure the air is breathable - couldn't figure out that not only is our planet 70% covered with liquid that will disintegrate them, but its atmosphere is LOADED with it.  Like, how did they walk around a humid climate such as Brazil without inhaling moisture that would've corroded them from the inside?  How did it not happen to rain in any of the locales they invaded?  But okay, let's say for argument's sake, they couldn't figure out Terra Firma has water coming out its ass.  We'll shelve that gripe, as I have bigger goddamn fish to fry with this movie.

Hmmm, what d'ya suppose I could do with ol' Wonder Bat here?

No, what really pisses me off about this film is the other climactic "reveal," where Mel and his family are under siege by one of these lizard men, and only after flashing back to his wife's cryptic dying words "Tell Merrill to swing away" does it occur to Mel, "Say, perhaps I should urge my brother to grab that baseball bat on the wall and Al Capone E.T.'s fucking brains out."  Yeah that's right.  Instead of instinctively going for the first blunt instrument he can get his hands on, he ponders for a moment the last thing Mrs. Gibson said to him after a drunk driver pinned her to a tree, and it just so happened to suggest these Martian motherfuckers could be felled by a Louisville Slugger to their big green faces.  I know when I'm being attacked I try to think of a deceased loved one's final earthly guidance, no matter how irrelevant it might seem.  This one time I got mugged, I reflected on my grandmother's dying advice, "Boy, you show 'em you're good as gold," and I proceeded to take a golden piss all over that mugger, who ran screaming into the night.  What a fucking stupid ending to this movie.  Someone invades your home, you find a weapon and attack them with it.  It's literally one of the first two impulses you'd have, the other being to run/hide.  Why in the FUCK would this scene need an enigmatic flashback that neatly ties into the domestic crisis our heroes find themselves in?

This movie should be called Signs...That Your Director is a Pretentious Dingleberry.


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Top Ten Things: Doors Songs

Welcome to another Top Ten Things here at Enuffa.com!  Today we're talkin' about one of the most legendary rock bands of all time, the psychadelic quartet from southern California who emerged in the late 60s with a unique sound, poetically contemplative lyrics, and one of the best, most charismatic front men to ever hold a microphone.  It's the ten best songs by The Doors!

I first got into The Doors mostly thanks to the 1991 Oliver Stone biopic; I had been familiar with a couple of their well-known songs but never really took the time to sit down for a thorough listen until after seeing Val Kilmer's force-of-nature performance as the troubled rock crooner.  After seeing the film I went out and bought the double Best Of album, maybe the best compilation of any band's greatest hits.  Instead of simply being assembled in chronological order the song sequence has a flow to it.  Anyway I listened to that album ad nauseum for years and only within the past decade did I familiarize myself with the rest of the Doors' catalog.  This was a thinking man's rock band with a diverse set of influences that, despite its fairly short run, left an indelible mark on the music industry, inspiring generations of artists and musicans.

Here are, in my estimation, the ten greatest Doors songs....

10. People Are Strange

I first heard this song in cover form in the movie The Lost Boys, courtesy of Echo & The Bunnymen.  I was drawn in right away by the bouncy feel, the honkytonk piano, and the soulful vocals.  It wasn't until a few years later that I heard the original, but "People Are Strange" remains one of my favorite Doors tunes for the reasons above.  Its theme of being an outsider, a stranger in a strange land, sum up Jim Morrison's personality pretty well I think.  He marched to the beat of his own drum and music was his outlet in dealing with loneliness.  The gang vocals in the final chorus seem to illustrate the idea of other outsiders finding solace in each other, unifying to take on the world.

9. Tell All the People

The Soft Parade might be my second-favorite Doors album, after the self-titled one.  It's just such a weird left turn, with the addition of strings and horns on nearly every song and major stylistic departures from the band's trademark sound.  Case in point the opener, "Tell All the People," a symphonic rock anthem with dense horn kicks and vocal harmonies (a rarity for a Doors tune).  This song sets the tone perfectly for an album that goes into very unexpected places and shows a band experimenting like crazy.

8. The Unknown Soldier

Jim Morrison's sound poem about the Vietnam War and its round-the-clock news coverage, "The Unknown Soldier" features drastic dynamic changes and unusual sound effects to create a grim atmosphere.  The song goes from sullen eulogy to midtempo rocker to military march to double-time climax.  This is one of the band's most redolent and atypical tunes. 

7. The Soft Parade

But the title track off the fourth album has to be their strangest song of all.  "The Soft Parade" is an 8-minute, multi-section suite that's all over the place musically (Is that a harpsichord??) and features Morrison's most bizarre lyrics.  Like John Lennon did with "I Am the Walrus," Morrison seems to simply be playing with words that conjure weird imagery, the songwriting equivalent of Salvador Dali ("Catacombs/Nursery bones/Winter women growing stones").  This epic track is the perfect summation for The Doors' most adventurous album.

Top Ten Things: AEW PPV Main Events

Welcome to a very topical edition of Top Ten Things, here at Enuffa.com!  Or should I say Top(ical) Ten Things?  No....?

I say topical because we were just treated to one of the greatest main events-- nay, MATCHES, in AEW history and thus I figured I'd take a look back at the best headlining bouts in AEW PPV lore.  This list is likely going to have to be altered frequently, as this company just keeps churning out classic PPVs and classic main event matches.  Hell, it'll probably grow to a top 20 before too long.

Say what you want about All Elite Wrestling's overall product, I've heard it all before.  Some of the criticisms are valid, a lot of it is not.  People have gripes with the booking, the follow-through after big storyline peaks (my biggest complaint), the clarity of the storytelling - I've had my issues with all of those things from time to time - but unless you're a diehard anti-AEW weirdo you can't argue in good faith that the in-ring product doesn't deliver huge when it counts.  The top talent in this company just knows how to put on a thrilling spectacle of a wrestling match and further this ever-evolving art form we all love.  

Over the last seven-plus years of AEW PPVs we've seen all manner of marquee matches at the top of the card.  Some technical, some brutal, some downright amusing.  And that's part of what I love about AEW; there's something for everyone, and all styles of pro wrestling are represented.  If you can't get behind that, I dunno what to tell you.

Anyway let's look at what are in my estimation the ten greatest AEW PPV main events of all time....

10. Stadium Stampede - Double or Nothing 2020

In the midst of the once-in-a-century pandemic known as COVID, AEW turned a deeply unfortunate situation into one of the most original and entertaining spectacles in recent memory, the Stadium Stampede match.  Chris Jericho led his Inner Circle faction of Jake Hager, Sammy Guevara and Proud & Powerful against Kenny Omega, Hangman Adam Page, Matt Hardy and The Young Bucks, in a hybrid of violence and comedy that ranged all over Jacksonville's Everbank Stadium.  This match had everything - crazy high spots (Kenny finished Sammy with a One-Winged Angel off an entranceway through a false stage), wild brawling (Hangman and Hager had an old-fashioned bar fight in one of the skyboxes), hilarious moments of levity (Chris Jericho challenged an Aubrey Edwards' two-count and demanded to see the instant replay), and some fun camera tricks (Matt Hardy changed wrestling personas while being held underwater).  What was originally schedule to be a Blood and Guts match (AEW's version of WarGames) instead became a wholly AEW-branded concept that is still used today, both in its original form and in the Anarchy in the Arena variant.  The inaugural Stadium Stampede is still one of my favorite AEW PPV main events.