Tag: Peter Sellers

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

BILL & TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY (1991) ***1/2

A great supporting character can elevate a movie.

Take, for example, the Grim Reaper from BILL & TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY. I mean, it’s not every day that a supposedly lowbrow comedy puts a novel spin on a character and plot thread from Ingmar Bergman’s THE SEVENTH SEAL.

In that one, you might remember a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) plays a game of chess against a personification of Death (Bengt Ekerot) to prolong his life. The mere image of the knight and Death playing chess by the sea had become one of the most revered in movie history by the time BOGUS JOURNEY director Peter Hewitt, writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, and Grim Reaper player William Sadler, as well as co-stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, got their grubby little mitts on it.

In BOGUS JOURNEY, our two most excellent dudes Bill S. Preston Esquire (Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Reeves) find themselves in a most hellish predicament. They are killed by evil robot Bill & Teds, called the Evil Robot Usses by our poetic lead characters, and wind up in Hell. What else would happen to a pair of heavy metal fans? Bill & Ted, who quickly discover their album covers lied to them, man, are greeted by Granny Preston, an evil Easter Bunny, Colonel Oats, and eternal boot camp, a plight highlighted by infinity push-ups and verbal abuse, in their own personal Hell. Colonel Oats tells Bill & Ted they are silky boys and silk comes from the butts of Chinese worms.

Back to the Grim Reaper. “How’s it hanging, Death?” asks Ted.

Bill & Ted play The Reaper dude in a series of games, including Battleship, Clue, and Twister, because Death is a sore loser and Bill & Ted must win two out of three or was that three out of five. Nah, believe it’s best five out of seven. The Reaper finally relents, “I will take you back.”

Bill & Ted are the first to ever beat The Reaper, and before that the first to melvin him. “Ted, don’t fear the reaper.” Cue them celestial cowbells.

I love just about everything about the Grim Reaper in BOGUS JOURNEY and he contributes to BOGUS JOURNEY being a step up from EXCELLENT ADVENTURE.

Sadler should have been at least nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance here. No, instead, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences saw fit to nominate Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley from BUGSY, Michael Lerner from BARTON FINK, Tommy Lee Jones from JFK, and winner Jack Palance from CITY SLICKERS. Keitel and Kingsley should have faced off against Sadler in a best-of-seven to see if we could get one less nomination for BUGSY. Colonel Oats would certainly have approved of Palance’s victory with his celebratory one-armed push-ups.

EXCELLENT ADVENTURE takes on time travel, historical figures, and historical fiction. Bill & Ted need to earn an A+ on their final report in history … and the future of the human race hangs in the balance. Literally, because in a mere 700 years in the future, humanity exists in an utopia built around the music of the Wyld Stallions, Bill & Ted’s most excellent rock band.

BOGUS JOURNEY adds depictions of the afterlife, Heaven, and Hell to the mix, and it gives us good and evil robot Bill & Teds in addition to living and dead Bill & Teds. Winter and Reeves compete with Michael J. Fox and Thomas F. Wilson for most permutations in a time travel comedy. Peter Sellers and Tony Randall would have been proud of all of them.

Additionally, the universe’s most brilliant scientific genius uses a single word vocabulary and that’s his name, Station. Station builds the “good robot usses” or “Station’s creations.”

I should not forget Joss Ackland as arch villain Chuck DeNomolos, who programs the evil robots to kill the good Bill & Ted because he hates their ideas and their insipid music. Don’t feel too bad for Chuck, because he gets a shot with Missy. Doesn’t just about everybody?

In the end, though, remember “You might be a king or a street sweeper, but sooner or later you dance with the reaper.”

That and, of course, “Be excellent to each other.”

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

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DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) Four stars
Stanley Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE (abbreviated title) OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (long title) contains one of my favorite lines of dialogue in any movie.

President Merkin Muffley, played by Peter Sellers in one of his three roles in the movie, tells the Americans and Commies both, “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”

I don’t give a damn that it placed No. 64 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years … 100 Movie Quotes list.

Oh, sorry, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” from GONE WITH THE WIND came in at No. 1, followed by quotes from Marlon Brando characters in THE GODFATHER and ON THE WATERFRONT that bums just can’t refuse.

Kansans will be sure thrilled that “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” came in at No. 4.

CASABLANCA led that list with six quotes and freaking JERRY MAGUIRE picked up two. Are you kidding?

Anyhoo, DR. STRANGELOVE certainly lives up to such a title: It’s a strange movie about strange people doing and saying the strangest things.

I’ve heard it described as a movie about what could happen if the wrong person pushed the wrong button.

That wrong person would be General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), who believes them damn commies have conspired to pollute our “precious bodily fluids.” To say that it’s an obsession for Gen. Ripper would be one of the great understatements.

Gen. Ripper orders a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.

Then we get a mad gallery of characters that are just slightly less mad than Ripper: Muffley, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, and Dr. Strangelove played by Sellers; General Buck Turgidson by George C. Scott; Colonel Bat Guano by Keenan Wynn; and Major T.J. “King” Kong by Slim Pickens, for example. Muffley and Turgidson are predominantly inside the War Room, one of the great movie sets.

Sellers originally had been slated to play four roles, including Kong, but it went down to three after he hurt his ankle.

Sellers predominantly improvised most of his dialogue and his ad-libs were retroscripted into the screenplay.

Sellers modeled Muffley after 1952 and 1956 U.S. Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson and former Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove after Wernher von Braun. Strangelove’s very reminiscent stylistically of mad scientist Rotwang from Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS.

Strangelove comes aboard late in the movie as humanity faces nuclear destruction.

Scott, who later won an Oscar for Gen. Patton in the Best Picture-winning PATTON, played Gen. Turgidson a lot differently than he intended and he was apparently tricked by Kubrick into acting ridiculously like in the final film. Scott never worked with Kubrick again. Kubrick and Scott played each other at chess and Kubrick got the edge on Scott, a skilled player, often.

John Wayne and Dan Blocker, of course, turned down Kong because, you know, DR. STRANGELOVE was just way too darn pinko for their persuasions.

The role ended up in the hands of the one-and-only Pickens, whom the makers of DR. STRANGELOVE did not understand was a genuine cowboy.

They did not tell Pickens that it was a black comedy and he played it straight, gloriously straight.

He gets one of the great exit scenes in film history.

There’s a whole lot about DR. STRANGELOVE that I don’t want to talk about in this space, especially for those who have not yet seen the movie.

I believe, however, that you will find it to be one of the great movie experiences.

It’s definitely the satire the Cold War deserved.

It’s an incredibly smart and sneaky movie, truly ahead of its time.

For example, a Cornell University professor Legrace G. Benson wrote Kubrick a fan letter and the professor interpreted DR. STRANGELOVE as being very sexually-layered. (Not sure how people could miss it.)

Kubrick wrote Benson back, “Seriously, you are the first one who seems to have noticed the sexual framework from intromission (the planes going in) to the last spasm (Kong’s ride down and detonation at target).”

And, for sure, after DR. STRANGELOVE you will never hear “We’ll Meet Again” the same way again.