Some films take your breath away. Some of them do it for the wrong reasons.

I've always been too cheap to sign up for "premium" cable channels, but my cable company offered me one for free recently and it has finally paid off. I saw what I believe is the worst movie ever made. Call me crazy. Yes, there's "Plan 9 from Outer Space." Yes, there was that Tom Green movie from a few years ago. But, my friends, they cannot compete with the disaster that is "Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives."

First, I must admit to being a fan of the first "Eddie" movie. It was kind of a take off the idea that Jim Morrison is not buried in Paris, but alive and living in Africa.* A reporter, played by Ellen Barkin, visits all the members of a band, the Cruisers, whose lead singer disappeared at the height of his fame and is presumed dead. The movie was nicely laid out and, glory be, the music wasn't half bad (shout out to John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band!)

So was Eddie dead? Spoiler alert:** the movie ended with a shot of a clearly living, but aged Eddie. Where had he been? What was he doing with his life?

"Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives" answers that question. He lives in Quebec! He works in a factory surrounded by people who have no idea that he is a silenced musical genius. He broods. He's tortured by unfulfilled artistic desires and feelings of inadequacy. His former bandmates, most of whom declined to return to this French-Canadian themed sequel,*** keep asking themselves, "Why Eddie? Why?" Bo Diddley shows up for a cameo discussing the time that he jammed with Eddie. Musicologists are called in to examine recordings that might prove our lost giant of American blue collar culture is still be alive. In short, the film takes Eddie VERY seriously and it's impossibly silly movie and my nominee for the worst film ever made.

Thank god I am not actually paying for Showtime.

*Young Stephanie was actually intrigued by that idea and hoped that Morrison was alive.
**Can you spoil a movie the ending of a movie that was released 20 years ago?
***Tom Berenger had moved onto "The Big Chill" and "Platoon." He wasn't playing second fiddle to Pare any more. Although when was the last time I saw Berenger? He might be interested in a sequel now. Call his agent!

As a young under grad at Glasgow University I was also intrigued by the story of Jim Morrison having escaped to Africa but didn't expect real movie buffs would do? Can't say I liked the Eddie movies much....