Tag: Tony Randall

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.”

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

GREMLINS 2

GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH (1990) Four stars

I watched GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH for the first time sometime that summer after it first attacked multiplexes on June 15, 1990.

I wanted to see it badly, since I absolutely loved the original GREMLINS and felt hyped up additionally by the TV ads. I saw it at the Pittsburg 8 during a calendar year (1989-90) that brought multiplex trips to BATMAN, BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II, PARENTHOOD, and TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES.

GREMLINS 2 did not let me down, I loved it then and I love it now after having seen it several times, and it has remained one of the most pleasurable multiplex experiences of my life. It’s lingered in my head all these years.

For example, every time since watching GREMLINS 2, when I hear Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” I cannot help but replace it with the Gremlins’ grand production number inside my head. Watching the horribly overrated SHAME (2011) quite a few years back, I wished that GREMLINS 2 and SHAME were spliced together and the little beasties would ruin Carey Mulligan’s showcase rendition.

I’ve heard that GREMLINS 2 is an acquired taste and that you have to be in a certain mood to watch it. Well, I can say that I have acquired that taste and I don’t know, I’m always in the mood to watch a good movie.

“Silly rather than scary like the first GREMLINS” is the verdict on GREMLINS 2 and what people really mean when they spew the party line about being in that certain mood.

— GREMLINS 2 is a running commentary on sequels — everything from merchandising to an endless supply of new characters to sharp but affectionate jabs at the rules of the GREMLINS world and movie sequels in general.

It attempts to be an anti-sequel.

“When I was asked to do the sequel, which I originally turned down because it was so hard to make the first one,” director Joe Dante said in a 2015 interview. “The only reason I decided to make the sequel was because years later they had tried to make a sequel and couldn’t figure out how to do it, and they really wanted another one. So they said to me, ‘If you give us a couple of cans of film with gremlins in them next summer, you can do whatever you want.’ And they gave me three times the money we had to make the first one. So I made GREMLINS 2, which was essentially about how there didn’t need to be a sequel to GREMLINS.”

— We all know the three rules from GREMLINS: Don’t get them wet; Don’t expose them to bright light (especially sunlight, it will kill them); Don’t feed them after midnight.

Naturally, in GREMLINS 2, supporting characters in a control room challenge the hero Billy after he shares the rules.

“What if one of them eats something at 11:00, but then he gets something stuck in his teeth?”

“Like a caraway seed or a sesame seed?”

“And after 12:00, it comes out. Now, he didn’t eat that after midnight.”

It goes on.

“Wait, what if they’re eating in an airplane and they cross a time zone? I mean, it’s always midnight somewhere.”

I am sure many of us asked the burning question, “Isn’t it always after midnight?”

— Mr. and Mrs. Murray Futterman, whom we all thought met their demise in GREMLINS, return for the sequel. That guy Dick Miller (1928-2019) and Jackie Joseph (born 1933) reprise their roles, partly because it’s a Joe Dante movie and what’s a Joe Dante movie without Dick Miller.

— GREMLINS sparked much controversy over its ‘PG’ rating and parents complained about the film, a fact incorporated into GREMLINS 2.

From a 1984 article in The Christian Science Monitor, “Recent releases such as INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM and GREMLINS have spurred controversy about their PG ratings. Many parents felt the violent content and some of the special effects warranted a stiffer rating. A significant number of directors, producers, and theater owners agreed and pushed for a change.”

Hence, the PG-13 rating was born and it debuted with the release of RED DAWN on Aug. 10, 1984.

— Film critic Leonard Maltin, a fan of Dante and his work, gave a negative review to GREMLINS.

“A teenager’s unusual new pet spawns a legion of vicious, violent monsters who turn picture-postcard town into living hell. Comic nightmare is a cross between Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE and THE BLOB; full of film-buff in-jokes but negated by too-vivid violence and mayhem.”

Maltin then makes a gratuitous cameo appearance in GREMLINS 2, where he’s mauled by the new batch for his negative review of the original film. Maltin’s famous last words, “Ow. I was just kidding. Ah. It’s a 10. It’s a 10.”

— At one point in GREMLINS 2, the title monsters disrupt their own film and it takes a threat from Hulk Hogan to get the picture back on track. …

“Okay you guys, listen up! People pay good money to see this movie! When they go out to a theater they want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booth! Do I have to come up there myself? Do you think the Gremsters can stand up to the Hulkster? Well, if I were you, I’d run the rest of GREMLINS 2! Right now! Sorry folks, it won’t happen again.”

— Phoebe Cates became famous predominantly for two scenes: doffing her bikini top to the tune of the Cars’ “Moving in Stereo” in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH and her ‘Why I hate Christmas’ speech in GREMLINS. In GREMLINS 2, Cates’ Kate starts on a speech why she also hates Lincoln’s birthday.

— GREMLINS and GREMLINS 2 main protagonist Billy Peltzer’s inept inventor father Rand (Hoyt Axton) played a pivotal role in the first movie. Rand Peltzer gets an upgrade in GREMLINS 2. We get eccentric billionaire Daniel Clamp (John Glover), a combination of Donald Trump and Ted Turner, whose technological innovations inside his wonderful Clamp Tower never seem to work properly. I get a kick from the building announcements, for example “Tonight, on the Clamp Cable Classic Movie Channel, don’t miss CASABLANCA, now in full color with a happier ending.”

The title characters take over Clamp Tower, creating all sorts of memorable scenes.

— I should perhaps mention the diabolical Dr. Catheter (Christopher Lee), identical twins Martin and Lewis played by identical twin actors Don and Dan Stanton, Grandpa Fred (Robert Prosky) clearly inspired by Grandpa (Al Lewis) from “The Munsters,” the appearance of the Batman logo, and a talking Gremlin named Brain (voiced by Tony Randall) who gets an opportunity to sum up the ethos of the beasts.

“The fine points: diplomacy, compassion, standards, manners, tradition … that’s what we’re reaching toward. Oh, we may stumble along the way, but civilization, yes. The Geneva Convention, chamber music, Susan Sontag. Everything your society has worked so hard to accomplish over the centuries, that’s what we aspire to; we want to be civilized.”

Of course, in the very next moment, Brain takes out his gun and shoots dead a goofy acting Gremlin.

Civilization is very hard to come by.