The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul '26: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), directed by Stephen Herek

The Trailer
 and

The Appropriate Tune - "Play With Me", by Extreme 

 

 

Damn, we’ve been on a bit of a losing streak, haven’t we? Just stinker after cinematic stinker over the last couple of days. There’s no one to blame for this except for my own self either, and believe me I tried. So how about we take a break from the gloomy, psychologically disturbed explorations of guilt that we’ve been tackling, and go for some lighter fare. Cleanse the palate, if you will. And I think I know just the right aperitif for the job.

In Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Alex Winters and Keanu Reeves star as Bill S. Preston esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan, two air-headed teenagers living in San Dimas California in the year 1988. Bill & Ted have big dreams of rock and roll stardom with their band Wyld Stallyns (despite not having the equipment or musical ability), but those dreams are put in danger when the reality of failing history class, and flunking out of high school, rears its ugly head. When the outcome seems bleak, the pair are greeted by a strange man named Rufus (George Carlin) and his equally strange phone booth. As it turns out, Rufus is a time traveller, his phone booth a time machine, which he offers to the two teens to help prepare for their make-or-break oral report the next day. Although why study history, when you could just hit up the time stream, grab a few historical figures, and have them due the talking for you? A most excellent plan indeed.

Gotta say, it’s pretty ballsy to release a time travel comedy in the 80s, considering the undisputed kings of the field had released its second installment the very same year. Bill & Ted manage to get away with this though, because of how profoundly unserious it takes the world. Back to the Future, although it was a comedy, was also a drama. Marty’s quest to unite his parents, Biff’s altering the timeline, there are stakes to what’s going on. In Bill & Ted things are much more laissez-faire. Bill & Ted don’t care about paradoxes, they’re walking around history in flannel and shorts, snatching people out of time, letting them play around with future stuff, just do whatever man, it’s all good. While there are stakes, much bigger than BttF technically, the goals of the protagonists are much simpler, and so Bill & Ted have the freedom to be much more absurd and irreverent than Marty McFly is in his film.

I think it also helps that Bill & Ted are pretty likable as far as protagonists go. They’re dumb to be sure, their goals are banal, but they’re not malicious. They’re not taking advantage of their gift to screw others over, they’re just trying to pass a class so they don’t have to break up their shitty garage band. Simple guys who make good by the end of the film, so it’s not hard to root for them. Both of them too, which isn’t always the case when it comes to buddy comedies. I mean did anyone really like Abbott over Costello? Or Butthead over Beavis?

What else should I mention…? There’s several musicians in the cast, including Jane Wiedlin of the Gogo’s and Clarence Clemons of the E Street Band. Better than the bands that are actually on the soundtrack, which you would think would take priority given the importance of music in the film, but hey, wasn’t my call to make. Maybe Extreme was the next big thing in 1989, I don’t know.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure gets the nod from me. An accurate title if ever there was one. Also the first part of trilogy as of a couple years ago, so maybe one day I’ll review all three. Until then, if you’re looking to take a short break from the creeps, put this. Or perhaps I should say chills, because that whole thing with Bill’s dad and his stepmom is kind of creepy.

STATUS: RECOMMENDED

 

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul '26: The Mothman Prophecies (2002), directed by Mark Pellington

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "Half Light", by Low 

If you’ve ever been in the state of West Virginia, then you are required by law to know about the Mothman. Terror of the hills, harbinger of disaster, lover of lamps, the Mothman is a pop culture icon in the Mountain State, even having an entire festival dedicated to him in the town of Point Pleasant. Yet despite being a local sensation, his appearances in major markets seems to have been rather limited compared to A-lister cryptids like Bigfoot or Nessie. I mean he’s in Persona, sure, but how many Mothman movies are there? Besides the one we’re going to talk about right now I mean. 

Based on the book by John A. Keel, The Mothman Prophecies stars Richard Gere as John Klein, a journalist for the Washington Post who, the night he closes on a deal for a new house, gets into a car crash with his wife. Both survive the accident, but further medical examinations bode grave tidings for Klein’s wife. Two years after her death, Klein is driving at night when he suddenly, unexplainably, finds himself in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. A lovely town that recently has been plagued with sightings of a strange ‘mothman’ with glowing red eyes, the exact same thing that Klein’s wife saw the night of the accident. So Klein, along with the help of police sgt. Connie Mills (Laura Linney), immediately begins his investigation. But how deep, and how bizarre, does this Mothman mystery go?

So it’s not really a Mothman movie so much as it is a movie involving the Mothman, which sounds like the same thing but it’s not. Because you hear the word Mothman and you expect the cryptid, you expect to see a Mothman at some point, and this is more akin to the aliens on the X-Files. Time loss, visions, messages to the protagonists that are cryptic for no reason, the works. Which would be fine if this were an episode of the X-Files, that show is vague and never answers questions all the time, but it’s not. Hell, if the X-Files did have a Mothman episode they’d probably show the damn Mothman, so there’s no real excuse. Just because you set your alien abduction story in Point Pleasant doesn’t make Mothman an alien.

I’m also not a big fan of Richard Gere in the star role here. I’m sure there are other films which better showcase his talents but I dunno man, he seems uniquely emotionless for a guy who should, logically, be chockfull of emotions. Even in emotional scenes it just doesn’t feel real to me. In that case he might have made a good protagonist for Silent Hill a few years later, but I just can’t relate to him as John Klein.

To end with a compliment, the big ending set piece looked good, the impact lessened slightly but the gratuitous and obvious use of stock screams. And the music was okay. You got Low on the soundtrack there, Glenn Branca, it’s nice.

If you went to watch Harry and the Hendersons, and there were only allusions to Harry without any actual scenes with him, you’d be kind of disappointed right? That’s how I’m feeling with The Mothman Prophecies at the moment. It’s okay, very X-Files coded as I said, but the fact that I didn’t get to see one manlike moth or mothlike man really ruined the whole thing for me.

STATUS: NOT RECOMMENDED

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul '26: An intermission

 Hey there folks, King Thunderbird here. Unfortunately I couldn't finish up a review today, so instead I'll just list some a couple movies and talk a bit about them. These may get proper entries in the future.

 

1. Willy's Wonderland (2021), directed by Kevin Lewis

    The idea of Nic Cage fighting Five Nights at Freddy's certainly sounds cool, and those moments when Nic Cage is fighting FNAF is fun. Everything else awas not so good

STATUS: NOT RECOMMENDED

 

2.  Basket Case (1981), directed by Frank Henenlotter

    Henenlotter's films are are some of the gems of 80's horror, delightfully bizarre movies with equally nasty special effects. Basket Case was the first of the bunch, and it's a weird, fun time.

STATUS: RECOMMENDED

 

3. Chopping Mall (1986), directed by Jim Wynorski

    Essentially a slasher film, but instead of some dude with an axe it's killer robots, which is cool. The robots look well made, and Dick Miller gets electrocuted, so there's a lot to like here for horror fans.

STATUS: RECOMMENDED 

 

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul '26: Beware! The Blob (1972), directed by Larry Hagman

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "The Blob", by The Five Blobs 

Back in Lake Placid, I mentioned the popularity of the ‘giant X attacks humanity’ trope in film, but if I had to name a breakout star of the creature features, I might have to go with The Blob. It’s got that simple edge that other films lacked. No zoomed-in B-roll of bored animals, no expensive models or stop-motion, just some karob syrup, red food coloring and a dream. Also Steve McQueen was there, which might’ve helped out.

 

Then in the 80s, as all the old horror movies were going through the remake cycle, The Blob saw the light of day again. Which was also pretty good! Not as charming as the original obviously, but it did up the gore factor, so you could see The Blob melting people alive just as the Founding Fathers intended. And for a while I thought that was it, but it turns out between the original Blob and the 80s remake Blob, there were actually even more Blobs roaming about. So I picked one, and we’ll see if the premise truly is evergreen.

In Beware! The Blob, Gwynne Gilford stars as Lisa Clark, a woman who has had the unfortunate distinction of walking in on a Blob eating a guy. Of course no one believes her at first, because the Blob is obviously super intelligent and knows exactly when and how to avoid detection. By the time it can’t avoid detection, however, is when it’s far too late. Gather your forces folks, it’s time to fight an intergalactic paramecium.

Man, this movie kind of sucks. Just about everything you see in the bottom of the 70s movie barrel can be found in here. Music that feels like it fell out of the ass of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon library, scenes that go on about 15 seconds longer than they should’ve, hippies, attempts at comedy that someone, somehow must have thought was funny at some point, and attempts at acting that are funnier than the comedy. It’s hard to even enjoy the chilling parts of the movie, because the parts surrounding it are goofy. Not charming, like the original Blob, but goofy. The kind that just makes you feel pissed off when you watch it.

The only thing that’s worth mentioning is that there’s a cameo from Burgess Meredith as a homeless man. I like Burgess Meredith, so that’s about 4 to 5 minutes in 90 minutes that was a step above the rest.

Man, this one put in a bad mood. It’s even hard to enjoy the various camera tricks they use with the slime, because it started me off on the wrong foot and I never recovered. Could be another Ring situation when I reevaluate it in the future, but right now I’m not feeling it. Watch the original Blob, or the remake if you’re more of a gorehound, and then if you’re somehow not Blobbed out, then go for this one.

STATUS: NOT RECOMMENDED

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul '26: Ring (1998), directed by Hideo Nakata

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune - "Video Killed The Radio Star", by The Buggles 

Funny how things just explode in popularity from seemingly out of nowhere. Like those couple months in the late 90’s when the swing revival topped the billboard charts, or the way Korean stuff is very popular these days. Or in the 00’s when an adaptation of a Japanese film became a film sensation.

It’s a bit strange, right?  I mean it feels like The Ring has been a consistent presence in pop culture for a while now; It’s been referenced in plenty of TV shows, one of the Scary Movies had a bunch of stuff about it, you might even give it credit for the short-lived wave of English adaptation of Asian horror like The Grudge and Pulse. Yet it’s not like it was a hugely successful franchise, in America at least there was just the one movie. A very different case in Japan, where it was and still is a successful franchise, with spinoffs and all the stuff you’d expect such a piece of pop culture to be. And it’s Japan where we’ll be taking our movie blog today.

In Ring, or Ringu if you’re a weeb, Nanako Matsushima stars as Reiko Asakawa, a journalist and single mother who is investigating the mysterious death of a teenage girl, which actually turns out to be the mysterious death of several teenagers. All sudden, all unexplained. The common thread? They’re all said to have watched a video tape and received a phone call exactly one week before their death. What could this mean? Is there really some sort of killer video? And there’s probably no issue with watching random unlabeled VHS tapes you find in cabins, right?

It is, unsurprisingly, very Japanese in its mindset. Spirits, urban legends, curse, all things which exist everywhere which seem to hold a special place in the heart of Japanese pop culture, from my own limited point of view. Especially curses which just torture and kill you for real reason, Japan loves that particular trope. It’s like creepypasta land over in Nippon, doesn’t matter if you are a living saint, if you do literally everything right all the time, if you do this one innocuous thing one time then you’re fucked for all eternity. Do not pass Go, do not collect 100 dollars, go straight to hell.

It is also, perhaps surprisingly, not all that scary? Of course with the amount of horror movies I’ve seen I’m desensitized to this kind of stuff, but there wasn’t anything that happens in the film that even slightly unnerved me. Really Ring is more of a mystery film with some horror elements to it, like Lady in White or other such films. Which is fine, Reiko uncovering the origin of the tape is fairly interesting, but if you look at the posters or see a spoof of a woman coming out of a TV and you're expecting some kind of hellride of terror then you’re going to be disappointed. Your average episode of X-Files is more bone chilling.

I dunno, it feels like I’m ripping on this film a bit too harshly. It wasn’t bad really, it was a very digestible scary movie with a simple premise, it’s no wonder why it was able to see the success it did. I just wasn’t able to keep my interest with it. Maybe one day if I ever rewatch it I’ll be able to revise my opinion, but for now it’s a ‘no’ from me.

STATUS: NOT RECOMMENDED

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul '26: Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter (1984), directed by Joseph Zito

The Trailer

and

 The Appropriate Tune - "Love Is A Lie", by Lion

Originally today’s post was about the 1978 iteration of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, starring Donald Sutherland. But when I went to watch it, it decided to disappear off of all the streaming services I use. Great. So instead of writing about something I was prepared for, let’s just talk about one of the Friday the 13th movies instead.

It’s Friday the 13th yet again, and with Jason Voorhees totally dying in the last film, young adults are free to start sucking and fucking once again at Crystal Lake. Young adults like Trisha Jarvis (Kimberly Beck) and Jimmy Mortimer (Crispin Glover). Except it turns out that Jason isn’t dead at all from being killed in the last movie. He’s totally alive, and he’s out for blood. I’m not talking donations to the American Red Cross either, this is the murdery kind of blood. And there’s plenty of it to go around.

Ironically enough it’s taken until the 4th film to reach what might be called the definitive Friday the 13th movie. You’ve got Jason as the killer, he’s got the hockey mask, there’s no silly 3-D gimmicks, if you asked someone who had never seen Friday the 13th to describe a Friday the 13th movie, this is round about what they would describe. Perhaps in presenting what they market as the ‘final chapter’, the idea was to strip the concept down to the bare bones. No characters you care about, no storylines, just some dude in a mask killing people for 90 minutes. Which it pulls off quite well.

For those gorehounds in the audience, Part IV might not be as violent as they might hope. There is certainly death in the film, blood, violence and all that, but it seems very reluctant to do so, with audiences only seeing a second or two of the killshot before cutting away. Studio interference perhaps, I believe the series had a lot of issues with censorship and whatnot, nut in any case it results in this contradictory movie that feels incredibly violent but is also squeamish about it.

It turns out, The Final Chapter would not turn out to be the last Friday the 13th movie. If it had been, it certainly would have been a better sendoff than most horror franchises get, and better than the purgatory than the franchise resides in these days. As it is, it’s an alright slasher movie with much more Corey Feldman than its peers, which might be the most terrifying thing of all. Pick it up for an alright movie night.

STATUS: RECOMMENDED

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul '26: Silent Hill (2006), directed by Christophe Gans

 

The Trailer

and

 The Appropriate Tune - "You're Not Here", by Akira Yamaoka

 

 

Used to be that the words ‘video game’ and ‘movie’, when combined, produced such a powerful stink that no human being could stand them. A terrible combo it was, the filmmaking side unwillingness or inability to meet the source material on its level mixing perfectly with the studios disinterest in anything besides money. Nowadays of course it’s different, you can sit down to your Sonic or Mario movie with your 55 dollar popcorn, play spot the reference and have a charming 7 out of 10 evening. But those 30 years since Bob Hoskins pretended to be a plumber? Those are the wilderness years, the years that spawned the loudest and also loudest of youtube movie critics the world has ever known. And now, in my hubris, and because I drew the poster, I must see for myself these horrors. I must take a visit to Silent Hill.

Based on the famous Playstation survival horror series, Silent Hill stars Radha Mitchell as Rose De Silva, a mom whose daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) has a unfortunate case of sleepwalking suicide attempts, all the which mentioning a town named Silent Hill. Now most parents whose children have seizures while screaming the name of a town they’ve never been to might try taking them to some kind of ‘hospital’ to be examined by ‘doctors’, but Rose clearly knows better than any experts, so she kidnaps her daughter and takes her to Silent Hill, which will surely cure her of what ails Then her daughter disappears. Then the town goes crazy. So now Rose must traverse this crazy town and find her lost and now in danger daughter, because clearly just leaving her daughter at home with her dad and doing her own investigation would have been way too hard.

I’ve not played a Silent Hill game, but I’ve seen enough secondhand material to have an idea of what the series is. They’re games principally about trauma and loss, where characters are trapped in this surreal, eldtritch place which twists and turns in order to torment them over things they’ve done, or don’t want to admit. Everything about the games, to the way NPCs interact with your character, to the places they go to in Silent Hill, to the design of the creatures they protagonists face, reinforce this detached, tortuous nightmare they are in. Silent Hill the movie…doesn’t do that really? Rose is basically an innocent bystander who stumbled into all this for good-hearted reasons, and while while the movie is technically about trauma, it’s much more personal and I guess humanized, rather than the ethereal tone of the games. Which is okay in a fashion, adaptations aren’t always 1:1 with the source material, but the logic should still be consistent. If Pyramid Head is in the movie, there should be a reason that he’s in the movie, just as there was a reason in the games. If the creatures in the movie look a certain way, there should be a reason they look that way, as there was in the games. Otherwise it’s just form without substance, references for the sake of references, without engaging with what Silent Hill is trying to say.

To give the film some credit, I think the film does quite well aesthetically. Christophe Gans and crew do a good job at capturing the ghostly void of the town, and the industrial decay of the other world. The soundtrack also feels suitably downtempo, and with series mainstay Akira Yamaoka contributing some of the music there are moments in the film that truly feel as one with the games. To take back some of that credit though, the CG looks like ass and they use a lot of it. I was already complaining about CG with Lake Placid so I don’t want to keep going back to that well, but the way they pour it on is just weird. Using CG to do the shift between the town and the other world? Sure, makes sense, I’d even say they do it well. But why are you using CG with Pyramid Head? Pyramid Head is a buff dude with metal on his head, I’m fairly certain just having a real buff dude there for the five minutes that PH is on screen would have been a lot better and cheaper than however much you had to pay to get a computer to do it. Same goes for the other monsters, which all look like they could be done naturally but are instead done with CG and look kind of shitty.

So if Silent Hill the movie doesn’t do anything that would satisfy those who like Silent Hill the game, is there a reason to watch? Not really. I mean there are a couple movies out there about towns you shouldn’t go to to out there to choose from, and movies that more competently evoke a surreal, dreadful atmosphere. The visuals are okay, the music is okay, the acting is okay, everything is just okay. That was enough for it to warrant a sequel I guess, studios will do as they will, but it arouses no passion in my soul. You’re probably better off just watching a longplay on youtube. Or, you know, playing the games yourself.

STATUS: NOT RECOMMENDED