Under the Sea

Ms. Spenser was really excited that I wanted to watch Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) the day after Madame Web. It meant that she could ignore the movie and get some work done. 

It starts with Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry/Aquaman/King of Atlantis living his best life. He knows people think he's a goof who talks to fish, but doesn't care, because he gets to bust heads. He spends a lot of time with his dad Temuera Morrison and baby - although his wife Amber Heard seems to be spending her time under the sea, and isn't really missed. Momoa's only problem seems to be the boring business of being king. What he doesn't know is that the Black Manta, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, has a big scientific project to find some powerful McGuffin. This project, headed by Randall Park, turns up a black trident that gives him powers and maybe breaks his brain. 

His crew breaks into the Antlantean orichalcum reserves and steals it all to power his ancient machines of mysterious import. Orichalcum was used by Atlantis in the bad old days, but it emits greenhouse gases that almost caused global extinction. But Abdul-Mateen don't care. Anyway, this gives Heard a chance to do some fighting and get hurt enough to be excused from the movie.

Momoa doesn't really know what to do here, but he has a half-brother, Patrick Wilson, who understands the criminal mind. In fact, he's currently incarcerated in a desert to sap his powers. I think this is in the last movie, but don't feel like looking it up. Anyway, he breaks Wilson out and they head for the undersea underworld. This criminal kingdom is headed by the Kingfish, voiced by Martin Short (whose cameo it too short). 

This leads to the usual thing - a quest for the clue that will lead to the map that will lead to the instructions for how to use the device ... wait, that was Dial of Destiny. You get the idea. This gives them a chance to go to all kinds of locations. Unfortunately, I kept losing track of whether these were on land or under the sea. Also, what the stakes were and what was going on.

Also, things kept blowing up, I guess because director James Wan likes to blow things up.

Yes, Wan is back directing, and once again it's hard to feel his style, There are some mutant CGI monsters, but that's about it. 

I felt like this was a bit more of a mess than the first one, and that was no model of clarity. But I do want to say that the leads did a great job. Momoa's cheerful lunkhead is as charming as always. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is awesome, way too good for this movie. His intensity and evil throws off the balance of this essentially lightweight movie. And Patrick Wilson - I've decided I want to see him as Aquaman. For me, the comics Aquaman is a slim, blond athletic guy, maybe modeled after Alan Ladd (a swimmer before he was a movie star). Wilson kind of fits. 

In conclusion, Aquababy saves the day.

What a Tangled Web

My plan was to watch Madame Web (2024) unironically. You may know that I tend to like comic book movies, even the ones that are objectively (?) bad. Let's see how well this works here.

It starts in the Amazon, where Madame Web's mother is studying spiders while pregnant with etc. Her guide is Tahar Rahim, a slimy sort, whose lines and their delivery are hilarioulsy inept. Fortunately for Rahim, they are also dubbed by someone else. Anyway, when she finds the rare whozis, he kills her and steals it, while an Amazonian tribe of spider-people whisk her away to give her a spider bite and deliver her baby. 

We cut to the present, 2003 for some reason. The baby has grown up to be Dakota Johnson, a hotshot EMT and ambulance driver, working with Adam Scott (who is supposed to be "Uncle" Ben Parker, but the movie can't really say that, due to rights). Helping someone out of a car crash, she gets dumped into the river, and experiences weird hallucinations - including the death of a co-worker. When said co-worker dies as she has forseen, she realizes that she has powers.

The next set of visions happen on a train, where Johnson sees Rahim attack and kill three young women. We know that he now has web powers himself, and believes that these girls will grow up to be Spider-Women and kill him. But Johnson hustles these girls off the train before Rahim can get them. She steals a taxi and takes them into the woods - and leaves them there.

The girls are Sydney Sweeney, a nerd with big glasses, Isabela Merced, a pretty Latina, and Celeste O'Connor, a rough black girl from a rich family. They hang out awkwardly for a while, because they were told to stay put by a crazy lady, and they are being chased, maybe, by a crazy guy. But they get hungry and head to a diner. 

There, they decide to pick up some guys and dance on the tables, you know, diner stuff, but Rahim shows up again, and so does Johnson. They get away, and Johnson heads to the Amazon to seek answers.

And so it goes. Johnson's precog powers mostly work like resets - something terrible happens, then there is a blink and she's back before it happens and she can prevent it. But she after the first few garbled visions, she doesn't even realize that she is in a vision until the reset. I guess this makes sense to the gamer generation - save points or whatever. It also makes interesting cinema. But does it make sense as a superpower? Also, the three major visions she has are all underwater, while she is nominally drowning. Are spiders known for their underwater activities?

The script is a mess, full of loose ends, non-sequiturs,  and obvious ADR lines. The three girls get almost nothing, even in the woods/diner scene where they are the focus. Poor Sydney Sweeney, but at least she has some name recognition. 

But oddly, everything else is pretty much OK. The cinematography is great or at least pretty good. The action, except maybe the last big fight in the fireworks factory, is up to modern standards. Johnson and pretty much everyone does a lot with what they are given. 

So I was actually able to unironically enjoy a lot of this. But also, it is so blatantly bad that it is easier to enjoy it ironically - just go ahead and jeer.

Palm Springs Eternal

Palm Springs (2020) is another time loop story - a great one. 

It starts an earthquake in the desert. Then Andy Samberg wakes up in a motel in Palm Springs. He tries to have sex with his girlfriend Meredith Hagner, but she's too distracted getting ready for the wedding of her friend Camila Mendes. He hangs out in the pool in his Hawaiian shirt, drinking and talking about how one day is pretty much like any other.

At the wedding, we meet Cristin Milioti, sister of the bride. She is trying to get drunk when she is called upon to give a speech as the maid of honor. Samberg sees her discomfort, and jumps up to grab the mike. He gives a lovely speech and declares the floor open for dancing. When Milioti thanks him for saving her, she asks if he really believes all that stuff, and he tells her, nah, life is meaningless. She likes this answer so much, they go somewhere to neck, and start getting undressed among the rocks in the desert. 

Here the movie takes its first big curve - J.K. Simmons jumps out and shoots Samberg with a crossbow. He takes off running, and reaches a strangely glowing cave. He tells Milioti to stay back, run away, but she follows him. And...

Samberg wakes up again, same morning as last time. But this time, when he's in the pool, Milioti comes screaming at him. She wants to know what he's done to her. The answer is simple: She's in a time loop, the same one he's been in for countless days. Each time you die or go to sleep, you wake up on the day of the wedding. You know the rules of time loop movies, I don't have to explain it to you.

It's really a matter of how it plays out. Samberg has been in the loop so long he has forgotten his previous life. He has accepted nihilism, and enjoys knowing that anything he does will be undone - no hangovers, no consequences for social or sexual peccadillos, all damage undone. Milioti, who had been depressed, possibly alcoholic, before the loop, can embrace this attitude. But she can't live like this forever, partly due to a need to atone for things she has done before. She thinks this might break her out, but the "karmic trick" doesn't work. But she can't just accept being stuck. 

It's a little like Groundhog's Day, but with Andy MacDowell in the loop too. Except, Milioti is a lot more rough-edged than MacDowell. But what I mean is that the charm of the actors is what makes it all fun. 

Cracking the Spine

The Spine of Night (2021) seemed like a big thing in Heavy Metal style animation a couple of years ago. I finally got to se it. It was all right.

It starts with a naked woman warrior (voiced by Lucy Lawless), wearing only a leafy collar, climbs to a giant skull cave and confronts the gaurdian living within (vocied by Richard E. Grant). He is guarding a sacred flower, but lawless has one too. She tells him what brought her to him. She was living peacefully in a swamp, when they are invaded by the neighboring kingdom. Her people is slaughtered and she is taken to the king (voice of Patton Oswald). In the dungeon she meets a young scholar, who recognizes the flowers she wears as a collar. At his instigation, she uses their powers to blast their way out of prison. But the scholar steals the flower and leaves her behind. 

The rest of the movie is variations on the theme - the evil scholar being evil, or the guardian telling tales of the early days of the bloom. It's all very swords-and-sorcery/barbarian-style, with a lot of bloodshed and some nudity. It was fun but I have two major issues:

1. The animation was pretty crude. The motion was largely rotoscoped, so that wasn't the problem. It's just that the basic drawing style was... basic. You wouldn't want most of this on the side of your van, or tattooed on your chest. Just not that epic.
2. The score is just basic cinema music. There clearly should have been a full heavy metal screaming guitars score. I'm sure that thousands of knuckleheads in their garages could have taken care of that no problem. 

Still, it was a fun story, with lots of lore and gore. The story was worthy of the Heavy Metal movie mantel, but not the execution.

Aren't You Glad You Saw Dial?

We knew we were going to watch it eventually, so we bit the bullet and put on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023). SPOILER - Harrison Ford de-aged pretty well.

It starts out on a Nazi train at the end of WWII. They are gathering up all the priceless artifacts, including Hitler's obsession, the Lance of Longinus. When Indy (de-aged Ford) and Toby Jones have infiltrated the train and find that the lance is a fake. Nazi Mads Mikkelsen figures this out as well - in fact, the whole trainload is fake, except for one artifact: a part of the Antikythera device, the eponymous Dial. Ford and Joes manage to get away with it, just before the train gets blown up (on a bridge, as is customary these movies).

In the present day, 1969, Ford is retiring from his professorship. Also, Marion is divorcing him and Mutt (Shia Lebeouf) has died offscreen (on his way back to his home planet, we assume). He's feeling very low, but his god-daughter, Toby Jones' daughter, Fleabag herself, Phoebe Waller-Bridge shows up, looking for info on the device. Ford had promised Jones he would destroy it because of its power, but he actually just filed it like the Ark, except in the school library. 

When they go to give it a look, they are attacked by Mikkelsen and his men. When the dust settles, Ford looks like he killed the librarians, and Waller-Bridge got away with the device. It turns out that she is not nice.

So, with the help of good old Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), Ford heads off to the stolen artifacts auction in Morocco. And so on and so on. The rest of the movie is a chase for the device, the other part of the device, the instructions for using the device, etc. Antonio Banderas gets a small part as an old friend of Indy's, but I don't think he's in the other movies like Rhys-Davies. 

The whole thing is fine - we get the usual fights, chases, and derring-do. Waller-Bridge makes a much better sparring partner/sidekick than poor Labeouf, and is served quite a bit better by the script. Ford is maybe better than ever, with the weight of age upon him. There's a cute scene of his last class before retirement where the pretty co-eds are ignoring his lecture instead of flirting with him. 

There isn't too much nostalgia and call-backery here, but I don't think this could really stand alone as a self-contained movie. But it doesn't really lean into the Last Movie in the Series feel. It pretty much has to be, given Ford's age. 

But I wish they had brought back Short Round, even for a cameo.

Korea Opportunity

The Night of the Assassin (2023) was intended as a bagatelle, a generic martial arts movie for me to watch while Ms. Spenser worked. It was exactly that and a darn good one.

It stars Shin Hyun-Joon, as the greatest assassin in the Joseon kingdom. But after a big fight, he becomes weak. His doctor tells him he has heart problems, and advises him to limit his martial arts activity, and maybe also his bedroom activities. But when a beautiful waitress in a gauzy dress serves him a private meal, he breaks the second piece of advice. When she turns out to be an assassin sent to kill him, he breaks the first. But it becomes known that he is weakened, and now everyone is after him.

He flees incognito, and is resting outside a village when a gang of kids swipe his bindle - including all his money. He finds a teahouse run by a widow with a young son (probably one of the guys who stole his stuff). She feeds him, and when he doesn't have any money, gives him a tray of noodles to deliver to a table. He keeps trying to leave (promising to pay later), and she keeps giving him tasks. She even gives him a place to stay at the end of the day. And so he becomes a waiter and scullery boy.

But the village has problems with bandits. Shin tries to keep out of it until...

Semi-spoiler: Around the end of the second act, the kid gets killed by the bandits. Like in The King's Man, this is a more-or-less welcome development, because the kid was kind of annoying. It also shifts the story away from family drama to straight action. 

It turns out that we have seen Shin Hyun-Joon before, in Shadowless Sword. I think I liked that one better, but this was perfectly servicable. 

It Truly Was a Great War

I'm not sure why, but we watched The King's Man (2021). I guess it was for Matthew Vaughan's masterful blend of comic violence and conservative fashion.

It starts in Africa during the Boer War. Ralph Fiennes, with his wife and young son, is delivering Red Cross supplies to Kitchener (Charles Dance). An assassin takes aim at Kitchener, but hits Fiennes' wife. Then their aide, Djimon Hansou, dispatches the assassin.

The son (now played by Harris Dickinson) grows up in luxury, as Fiennes is the Duke of Oxford. He is trained well, even in fighting skills, tutored by Hansou and no-nonsense nanny Gemma Arterton. But the loss of his mother has made Fiennes overprotective. When Fiennes and Dickinson go to Sarajevo to help the Arch-Duke Ferdinand in his diplomacy, they avert his assassination. And just like in real-life, they let him stumble into the assassin again, and he is killed. This only confirms Fiennes fears for his son.

But he doesn't yet realize that the assassin was part of a secret plot to pit the cousins King George, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Tsar Nicholas against each other. Other members in the conspiracy include Rasputin, Mata Hari, and Lenin. 

When the Great War starts Dickinson is just of age, and his father can't prevent him from joining up. But his father can put out the word that he is to be kept safe in a desk job. So he swaps identities with another soldier, and heads to the front. He performs an amazing feat of heroism, and, due to the identity swap, is shot in the head by a Scottish soldier.

It's pretty shocking to have what looked like the main character killed at this point, but, well, he was kind of drag. What the British call "wet". And this means that we get a lot more Ralph Fiennes. In fact, we get to see him try to seduce Rasputin (Rhys Ifans), then poison, shot, stab and drown him. 

In fact, there's at least a third of the movie to go after Dickinson gets killed, mostly revolving around the Zimmerman telegram and getting the US into the war. But there are all kinds of fun fights and goings on.

So, while this isn't a particularly good movie (even compared to the previous two), it does star a lot more Ralph Fiennes than you'd expect from an action movie. Funny, we got great older actors slumming in action trash in Operation Fortune as well.

Weirdly Enough

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) was a real breath of fresh air. A warts-and-all true story of the greatest or at least most famous accordian player in a very narrow genre. Or a total goof, one or the other. 

Al starts out as a normal kid, with a normal abusive father who lost a hand at the factory. A travelling salesman (Thomas Lennon) tries to get him to buy an accordian, and gets beaten to a pulp by his dad. But his mom buys it for him and he secretly learns to play. It all goes well until some friends get him to sneak out to a teen polka party, where he is goaded into playing his accordian. But the party is busted, and he is disgraced before his parents again.

When he moved out and went to school, he was played by Daniel Radcliffe. He lived with three nice young fellows who believe in doing whatever you want. When Al says he wants to perform existing songs with new, made-up parody lyrics, they encourage him to go for it. So positive and empowering, guys. 

While making a sandwich with his balogna, he is inspired to write "My Balogna". They record it quickly in a bathroom (good acoustics) and send the tape to the local kooky radio station (note: This really happened). Of course, they don't expect overnight success - but they get it. The tape is on the air before Al gets home, and is soon the most requested song. He takes the tape to the Scotti Brothers record company (played by Will Forte and Al Yankovic himself), and is humiliated and scorned.

But his roomies don't let him despair and make sure he doesn't back out from a punk gig. When they see the tough crowd, they decide to be his backing band. They might have mentioned that they were all musicians, but it never seemed relevant. And they slay the punk crowd, including Patton Oswald with "I Love Rocky Road".

It is at this show that Al meets Dr. Demento (played Rainn Wilson, never without his tophat). The good Dr. takes Al to a celebrity pool party where he meets all the big names: Pee Wee Herman, Tiny Tim, Alice Cooper, Gallagher, Divine, Andy Warhol, etc. Then Wolfman Jack (Jack Black) turns up and challenges him to make an impromptu parody of "Another One Bites the Dust". And you know how that turned out.

But even at his peak, Al wanted to go further. The answer came when Dr. Demento gives him some LSD-laced guacamole and he decides to do only originals, no more parodies. This results in his greatest hit, the original "Eat It". But when Michael Jackson does his parody, "Beat It", Al begins to spiral.

Madonna (Evan Rachel Woods) becomes his girlfriend and a bad influence. He starts drinking heavily and it's affecting his performance. After a car crash, he comes back with "Like a Surgeon". But when Madonna is kidnapped by Pablo Escobar, he has to go Rambo.

And we all know how it ends, with Al being shot on stage by a cartel hitman. This came as a big surprise to everyone, especially Weird Al himself, who wrote and produced this.

I can't believe I just summarized 80% of this movie. 

It's always funny and never in the way you expect. Al is always in doubt, but is surrounded by positive, helpful people. He gets success overnight and Madonna for a girlfriend. He overcomes obstacles, and even his father opens up to him, telling about growing up Amish and being shunned for playing accordian. Guess what song that inspired. 

And with all the talk about originals, they only do "Eat It", and everything else is parody until the song over the credits "Now You Know". I woudn't have minded "One More Minute" or "Dare to be Stupid".

The portrayals are amazing - Al and Dr. Demento, Madonna. Al's band, just like you thought thy'd be. The pool party is brimming with cameos, which I'll let you spot or look up. And if nothing else, there are at least five great songs performed. Worth it for that alone. 

Hit Parade

The Hit (1984) looked like a can't miss. A crime story starring Terence Stamp, John Hurt, and Tim Roth. Adding some spice is Laura del Sol, who danced flamenco for Carlos Saura in several movies (but not this one). 

It starts with a trial with Terence Stamp grassing on his criminal confederates, sending half a dozen to prison, including the boss. They react by raucously singing "We Will Meet Again".

The government sends Stamp to a village in Spain, where we see him living happily, chatting with the padre, shopping in the market. But when he gets home, a quartet of young thugs grab him, stuff his head in a bag and take him away.

The thugs deliver him to Hurt and Roth, who pay them off with a bomb. (They don't realize that one of them gets away.) Hurt is grim and focused, running the operation. Roth is a cocky youngster with flashy shades and a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. Stamp takes all this with some equanimity, chatting about how he expects they will get him to England. Roth tells him he's wrong - the boss is in Paris. When Hurt tells him to shut up, he apologizes, using Hurt's real name. So he's spilled two pieces of info. 

So most of the rest of the movie has Stamp acting unconcerned about his upcoming demise, and subtly trying to pit his two captors against one another. He gets Hurt paranoid about the car they're driving, so Hurt diverts to Madrid to a safe house. But they find a fat old Australian gangster squatting there. He has been living with Laura del Sol, his paid companion, who he really loves. When they leave, Hurt figures they have to kill them, but softens and just takes del Sol as a hostage. 

She acts as another wedge between the captors. Roth is a bit sweet on her, and even Hurt can't bring himself to just kill her. 

Ready for the spoiler? OK, SPOILER. Before they get to the French border, Hurt decides he has had enough. Stamp has been talking about the fragility of life and the futility of fighting death. But when Hurt tells him he's going to kill him right now, Stamp freaks, begs, and runs away, only to get shot in the back. Then Hurt shoots Roth - getting rid of witnesses, particularly one as lame as Roth. He beats up del Sol, but can't bring himself to kill her, muttering "You lucky girl". 

So as he's crossing the border alone on foot, del Sol sees him from the police station window, and he is gunned down too. 

This is a very stylish movie. Stamp is dressed all in white, doing a variation of his Christ figure. Hurt is a great grim-faced villain, and Roth is the dumb kid who thinks he's tough. He confesses that this is his first hit, and asks if Hurt will do the killing for him, and will he still get paid? Del Sol is beautiful and strong, never trying to seduce her way out, fighting to the last. Director Stephen Frears makes it all looks gorgeous.

And the whole psychological set up is so good, especially the payoff. Stamp is so aloof and philosophical, until reality comes home. When Roth asks him why he became a grass, he said that he couldn't keep running with that mob, like it was an ethical choice. Then he reveals that it was all about the sweet deal the police offered, and it makes more sense.

On the other hand, Ms. Spenser declined to watch more than a few minutes. Said something about spending enough time with unpleasant people in real life...

Dragon a Line

The Dragon Painter (1919) is an interesting silent movie, starring Japanese-American heart-throb Sessue Hayakawa. He produced it with the aim of more accurately representing Japanese culture.

Hakakawa-san plays a mad artist. He lives outdoors in the mountains, drawing landscapes and throwing them to the wind. He believes that he loved a princess who was turned into a dragon a thousand years ago. Since her face is denied to him, he draws her features, which is what he perceives the mountains, rivers and waterfalls to be. These scenes are lovely, but obviously not Japan, but Yosemite. You'll recognize it even if you have only seen postcards. 

A passing surveyor finds one of his pictures and is impressed. He is friends with a famous dragon painter, played by Edward Peil, Sr. Peil has no male heir to take as an apprentice, only a daughter, Tsuru Aoki. The surveyor convinces Hayakawa-san to meet him by telling him he knows where his princess is. Hayakawa-san arrives and angrily insults all the guests and the the fancy food and drink. But they show him Aoki-san doing a traditional dance, and tell him she is the incarnation of his dragon princess. At this, he is entranced and tamed.

So they are married, and he is happy. His wild hair is now decently cut and he trades his rags for a fine kimono. But it turns out that he no longer can paint dragons. Since he has his princess, he no longer needs to paint her. In despair, Aoki-san goes away, leaving a note, and they find her sandal by a cliff above the (Merced?) river. 

Once more, Hayakawa-san is maddened with anguish and begins to paint masterpiece after masterpiece. Finally, in his darkest hour, Aoki-san returns. She had merely hidden herself away to teach him that love must serve art. And they live happily ever after.

A few minor issues with this movie. I guess I can forgive Yosemite standing in for Japan, because it is beautiful, but it really doesn't look Japanese. I was more annoyed that we don't get to see more of the dragon paintings. The one picture we see from Hayakawa-san's mad period is a simple charcoal sketch (evn though we see him painiting it with an ink brush). I'm sure they could have found someone to do some ink sketches. 

But the Japanese interiors and costumes were great. And I loved the plot - love turning a man into a mad genius, the search for the lost lover in nature, happiness destroying genius, and the happy ending. I'd like to see it remade, maybe in a sci-fi universe, or something.

Since this silent was so short, we watched the other feature included on the Criterion disc, The Wrath of the Gods. Hayakawa-san plays an impoverished nobleman, whose family has been cursed for the impiety of an ancestor. His daughter, Aoki-san, is told that if she marries, the volcano in the town will erupt, killing everyone. Western sailor Frank Borzage, is shipwrecked and falls in love with Aoki-san. He tells her of Jesus, who would not be so cruel as to destroy a village of some impiety. This convinces her to marry him, and convinces Hayakawa-san to defile the local Buddhist shrine, replacing it with a cross. 

Of course, this causes the volcano to erupt, killing everyone, except Borzage and Aoki-san, who escape on a Western ship. See, Jesus saves - if you're Christian. I can't really see this as a happy ending. 

In conclusion, the score on these Criterion releases is exceptional - Japanese influenced, but not Japanese. For example, the koto part is played on a regular harp.

Mid Secret

Sure, you all know the hit song "Skeet Surfing" from the movie Top Secret! (1984). But did you know Nick Rivers other two songs on the top 10, "Skeet City" and "Your Skeetin' Heart"? I didn't until someone mentioned them on Twitter. Then we had to watch the movie again.

Val Kilmer is teen heart-throb Nick Rivers. He is roped into a cultural exchange program with East Germany by Omar Sharif. At a dinner, he sees Lucy Gutteridge being menaced by the authorities, and tells them she is with him. It turns out that she is a member of the Underground Resistance. They dance a stately waltz that includes nose tweeking and rump slapping, then he gets up and sings "Tutti-Frutti". Soon, he finds himself deeply involved in the French Underground, fighting Nazis, because the movie takes place in the 1940s, as well as the 50s and 80s. 

But this is an Abrahams, Zucker, and Zucker movie. You know, the Airplane guys. So nothing has to make sense. It is filled with silly jokes and set pieces. Some of the subtitled dialog is German, some of it is Yiddish curses. Their are sight gags, like a foreground telephone that looks huge in perspective and turns out to be huge in actuality. (This is a reference to, I believe, a Hitchcock trick of forced perspective.) There is also a whole scene where I noticed that the "German" dialog was actually English in reverse. Then I realized that the whole scene was being played in reverse, just to allow a few simple gags. 

I have to say, however, that the rate of gags per second is much lower than Airplane. There are also several songs, both 50s standards and pastiches thereof. These are actually sung by Kilmer, and pretty well too. But they are neither great enough or silly enough to do much more than fill out the time. The originals could have been included in one of those teen exploitation movies that MST3K riffs and not be out of place. Even "Skeet Surfing", the funniest of the songs, is a little too exactly Beach Boys.

So, second tier AZZ. Still pretty funny. And I'm sure this set Kilmer up to be Jim Morrison in a few years.