The Sheik (2014)

April 12, 2015April 12, 2015 / swampflix / Leave a comment

Much like with hip-hop or viral content, professional wrestling is all about self-promotion. In pro wrestling, you don’t necessarily have to be the best, you just have to convince your audience that you’re the best. Just ask Hulk Hogan. As the 80s era’s choice for the face of the company (that company being the WWE, of course), Hogan seemingly tore through every formidable opponent tossed his way, from Andre the Giant to “Macho Man” Randy Savage to Zeus. His rapid rise in popularity caused a version of mild cultural hysteria that was even afforded its own name. The Hulkster was smartly branded as not only a single wrestler, but an entire movement. Hulkamania was an 80s phenomenon that gave birth to both the annual cultural juggernaut WrestleMania and the lesser, round-the-year spectacle of WWE as a household sport. Hulk Hogan’s shameless self-promotion in the 1980s built that empire, supported with major backing from the multi-million dollar company pulling the strings, of course.

Last year’s profile documentary The Sheik’s most ambitious (and yet still believable) claim is that the success of Hulkamania (and, by extension, WrestleMania) was largely dependent on the appeal of Hogan’s main opponent, The Iron Sheik. Playing off of Americans’ Islamophobic prejudices during the Carter era Iranian hostage crisis, The Iron Sheik is credited here for being the ideal heel for Hogan, essentially single-handedly putting him over with the crowd. Born in Iran in the 1940s, Hossein Khosrow “The Sheik” Ali Vaziri was raised in a culture where traditional wrestling was a national obsession, where a healthy body meant a healthy state. Describing his teenage life in The Sheik, Ali Vaziri says “I was married to the wrestling mat. I didn’t care about girls; I cared about wrestling.” It was this dedication that landed him the position as bodyguard for the Iranian shah and, after emigration, an all-American coach for the Olympic wrestling team. The Iron Sheik was a mild-mannered American hero with an exceedingly sweet Midwestern wife & three adorable daughters before he found his true calling as a pro wrestling heel (a “bad guy”) that perfectly counteracted The Hulkster’s “I am a real American” persona simply by being a foreigner (nevermind that he has a depthless love for the country that he adopted).

The Sheik is not only credited in this flattering profile as contributing to the success of Hulkamania, but also for creating the priceless term “jabroni” (later popularized by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, of course) as well as the arguably-more-important public revelation that pro wrestling is, in fact, rigged. Once upon a time the ultra-macho ballet known as pro wrestling was assumed to be a true-to-life physical competition until (as this doc tells it) The Iron Sheik & supposed opponent “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan were arrested together on a beer & drug binge. It was the first time a face & a heel were ever proven to be hanging out as buds outside the squared circle. This “revelation” eventually lead to WWE magnate Vince McMahon seeking (and achieving) the tax breaks that come with being classified as a form of entertainment and not a professional sport.

If The Sheik is to be believed its subject would be credited as the sole launching pad for the very existence of modern pro wrestling itself and not just as the highly effective, very much timely heel that’s most likely closer to the truth. However, it isn’t until the film relaxes on the revisionist history lesson and profiles The Sheik’s more recent transition from drug addict with a broken body & a heart of gold to reformed family man that it loses a good deal of its credibility. It’s true that The Iron Sheik has a truly fascinating Twitter, YouTube and Howard Stern presence, but the movie conveniently sidesteps the racist & homophobic tendencies of his statements in those forums. As a journalistic, documentary endeavor, The Sheik fails to uncover answers that doesn’t support its central thesis that The Iron Sheik is 100% awesome, no faults. As a rose-colored profile of a very storied man who calls everyone “Bubba”, never says anything offensive about minorities, and most definitely quit mountains of crack cocaine, it’s much more effective. Supporting interviews with pro wrestling staples like Jim Ross, The Rock (who was apparently babysat by The Sheik’s wife as a child), Jake “The Snake” Roberts, Mick “Mankind” Foley, Brett “The Hitman” Hart, Jimmy Hart, and King Kong Bundy are sure to please any “sports entertainment” fan who are looking for a collection of anecdotes and not a controversial expose. The Sheik may be an exercise in shameless self-promotion, but that’s far from a new concept in the world of pro wrestling and (much like with the “sport” it covers) it’s a much more satisfactory proposition if you know what you’re in for before you arrive.

-Brandon Ledet

Body Slam (1986) and the Often Superfluous Nature of Bloated Spectacle in Pro Wrestling

March 23, 2015March 23, 2015 / swampflix / 3 Comments

Like most adults find themselves doing from time to time, I spent this past Friday night yelling myself hoarse at sweaty, costumed men as they wrestled each other in a middle school gymnasium. It was my first exposure to New Orleans’ own pro wrestling promotion Wildkat Sports, at an event called Wildkat Strikes Back. Sitting in a cramped, hot gymnasium with a crowd that ranged from screeching children to their elderly grandparents to hardcore, middle-aged wrestling nerds to roving gangs of way-out-of-place crust punks was a welcome alternative to the way I usually enjoy the sport: in the cold, TV-provided glow of living rooms. There was an intense, communal vibe in that gym that can be lacking in the larger, televised promotions and it made me realize just how much of a spectacle the sport can be on its own merit. When stripped down to its bare bones (sans the slapstick comedy sketches, celebrity cameos, pyrotechnics and half-baked stunts that can exhaust a more bloated program), pro wrestling is still entertaining in a genuine, visceral way.

Sometime in mid-80s pro wrestling had reached its most bloated point in history. With the rise of Hulkamania, the undeniably potent likeability of Andre the Giant, and the cutthroat business-sense of juggernaut promoter Vince McMahon, WWE (then WWF) reached the pinnacle of its cultural dominance when WrestleMania III broke the all-time attendance record of an in-door sporting event with more than 93,000 fans present in the stands (a record that still holds today). The level of sheer spectacle that accompanies events like WrestleMania is as disparate from the brand of pro wrestling you’d see at events like Wildkat Strikes Back as the difference in size of their respective crowds, but that spectacle isn’t exactly necessary to make “sports entertainment” . . . entertaining.

Arriving just a year before that record-breaking crowd at WrestleMania III (and a whole three years before WWE got into the film business themselves with No Holds Barred), the 1986 film Body Slam similarly gets confused about what makes pro wrestling entertaining, putting more value into the spectacle surrounding the sport than the sport itself. In the film’s laughably convoluted plot (it is a comedy, after all) rock ‘n’ roll manager Harry Smilac is struggling to make it with only one client under his wing (a band called KICKS) when he fortunately expands his roster by signing on pro wrestler “Quick” Rick Roberts (played by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper), mistakenly assuming that he is a musical act. Despite his initial repugnance toward pro wrestling, Smilac discovers that there’s good money in the sport and pretty much dives head first into the wrestling business until he (late in the film) has the brilliant idea of combining KICKS & Quick Rick’s talents and voila! Smilac gives birth to “Rock ‘n’ Roll Wrestling”. The spectacle of a live rock band playing while sports entertainers perform is treated here like the discovery of the cure for cancer. Smilac is lauded as a genius.

In Body Slam’s logic, Smilac not only improves pro wrestling with this invention, but he also improves rock ‘n’ roll. These are two forms of art that don’t need improvement. Both rock and wrestling are perfectly appealing when reduced to their most basic parts; they don’t need 80s-tinged grandstanding to make them worthwhile. It’s fitting, then, that the band Smilac manages, KICKS, is an obvious stand-in for the band KISS, who are no strangers to using theatrics & merchandising to distract audiences from their okay-at-best brand of rock ‘n’ roll. In the movie’s logic, KICKS’ songs (as well as their deep love of pyrotechnics) are not only a draw for the crowd, but they also give the wrestlers (well, the faces at least) strength to overpower their opponents. They’re breathing life into a far-from-dead brand of entertainment that really didn’t need their help in the first place.

Of course, Body Slam is a silly trifle of a film that shouldn’t be judged too harshly about what it has to say about pro wrestling as a sport, because it doesn’t have too much to say about anything at all, much less wrestling. However, the film does have some charms as a campy delight. The 80s cheese is thick enough to choke you as early as the opening scene, which features Smilac hanging out of a convertible, hair slicked back, hitting on bikini babes by showing off his gigantic car phone. There’s also some corny humor in exchanges like when a friend asks Smilac, “What are you gonna do, Harry?” and he responds “What I always do: manage!” The campy appeal of the rock ‘n’ roll wrestling plot doesn’t really get going until the last third of the film, but the montages are so worth it, especially the one that’s accompanied by the Body Slam theme song. There’s also, of course, a wide range of 80s wresters to gawk at here. Besides the aforementioned Roddy Piper, the film includes “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair, “Captain” Lou Albano, “Classy” Freddie Blassie, “The Barbarian” Sione Vailahi, and several members of the Samoan Anoaʻi family (including Roman Reigns’ father Sika), among others. Besides the innate fun of seeing them all in a feature film, they’re also more or less abysmal at acting, which helps keep the mood light. With all of this 80s-specific cheese flying around, the inclusion of always-welcome Billy Barty & Charles Nelson Reilly is somehow just icing on the cake.

It’s not a great movie, but Body Slam is effective as a time capsule of the 80s as an era of corny comedies, show-off musicians, and the birth of bloated spectacle in wrestling. The time capsule aspect goes both ways, though, both funny in its quaintly out-of-date aesthetic and disturbing in its penchant for finding cheap humor in topics like misogyny, racial caricature, cross-dressing and pedophilia. Those offenses aside, there are moments late in the film when they finally get the basic appeal of pro wrestling down when during a rock ‘n’ roll wrestling performance the band KICKS is attacked by a group of heels and the whole show devolves into chaos. There’s also a particularly bloody street fight match involving chains that feels pretty close to what a lot of hardcore fans are looking for in the sport, despite an announcer’s exclamation that “This is setting wrestling back 1000 years!”

When considered from the perspective of an enterprising showman (like a Harry Smilac or an Eric Bischoff), Body Slam is an interesting case study of what outsiders often get wrong in their assumptions about what makes pro wrestling entertaining. I’m not saying that local promotions like Wildkat Sports are inherently better than their televised, large scale, rock ‘n’ roll wrestling competitors; I’ll still be eagerly watching all 4 bloated-spectacle hours of WrestleMania XXXI this coming Sunday. I’m just saying that the sport is entertaining enough on its own merit, even when stripped of the fireworks, the KISS-knockoffs, and the David Arquettes. There’s a basic appeal to its violence & pageantry that’s evident whether you’re in a middle school gym with 1,000 sweaty nerds or an outrageously packed stadium of 90,000 rabid fans. The bloated spectacle is delicious lagniappe at its best and unnecessarily excessive at its worst. In Body Slam, it’s mostly the latter, though the film argues otherwise.

-Brandon Ledet

Monster Brawl (2011)

March 8, 2015March 29, 2015 / swampflix / 8 Comments

We here at Swampflix love wrestling movies. We love horror & gore. We also love low-budget/high-concept camp. It should come to no surprise then that the low budget camp fest Monster Brawl, within which famous monsters fight to the death in a graveyard wrestling tournament, is a huge hit with us. It’s the perfect example of a high-concept thoroughly explored and a modest-at-best budget pushed to its limits. The movie so firmly in our wheelhouse that I’d suspect it was secretly made with us in mind if it weren’t released four years before our modest blog was born.

If you’re asking yourself why famous monsters would meet to wrestle in a literal death match in an American graveyard the answer is simple: to determine the most powerful ghoul of all time, of course. Monster Brawl is filmed like a televised wrestling promotion: the company’s logo appears in the bottom of the screen, each competitor boasts about their monstrous abilities in individual promos, and an announcing team calls the matches live as they happen. For a small-time promotion that started in someone’s mom’s basement (seriously) Monster Brawl secured a surprisingly deep, talented roster. The Undead Conference features The Mummy, Zombie Man, Lady Vampire, and Frankenstein (“Technically it’s Frankenstein’s monster if you want to be a dick about it”). Wrestling for The Creatures Conference we have Werewolf, Cyclops, Witch Bitch, and Swamp Gut (a local boy as it were; Swamp Gut is an obese, Louisiana-tinged knockoff of The Creature from the Black Lagoon). The monster make-up and the in-the-ring gore looks great, seemingly eating up most of the film’s budget considering the range & scope of the limited locations & actors. A lot of time & energy went into the monsters, which was the right decision, and it pays off in gags like hieroglyphics playing under The Mummy’s incomprehensible promo and the Cyclops’ face-searing laser beams (or “mythical laser blasts” if you will).

Narrating the action, Monster’s Brawl’s ringside announcers feature Kids in the Hall vet Dave Foley as a barely-functioning alcoholic and character actor Art Hindle as former Monster Brawl champion Sasquatch Sid Tucker. Foley & Hindle seem to have a lot of fun with the absurdity of their lines, which include gems like “We underestimated this monster. He must have been trained in vampire slaying techniques” and “For the first time in professional sports, folks, we’re witnessing the dead rising from their graves to attack Frankenstein.” Monster’s Brawl gets a lot right about the more ridiculous aspects of pro wrestling: the former-wrestlers-turned-announcers, the inconsequential refs, the outside-the-ring action, etc. Because the film’s “death matches” are quite literal the action can include violence that the more family-friendly WWE cannot: chair shots to the head, inter-gender matches, murder. The spirit of wrestling is captured well and even includes small roles for former NWO member Kevin Nash and Hulk Hogan’s former blowhard manager “The Mouth of the South” Jimmy Hart. In addition to Hart’s ecstatic shouting & the announcing team’s endless drunken blathering the film features a third level of narration: the disembodied voice of the legendary horror staple Lance Henrikson, who is billed here simply as “God”. Henrikson only occasionally interjects on the action, punctuating particularly gruesome wrestling moves with words like “Majestic.”, “Appalling.”, “Tremendous.”, and “Discombobulating.” in what has to be a parody of the narration in Mortal Kombat gameplay.

Just as Monster Brawl gets wrestling right, it also nails the tone of horror flicks. Instead of cheesy entrance music that usually accompanies performers, the famous monsters get the eerie horror soundtracks they deserve. The action of the film also devolves into complete chaos in its final act, which is pretty standard for a creature feature. We were fairly cruel to Monster Brawl director Jesse Thomas Cook’s most recent film, the “hideous poo beast” monster movie Septic Man, but Monster Brawl gets so much right about both its pro-wrestling-meets-classic-horror premise, that it’s impossible not to love it (given that wrestling or gore-soaked horror are your thing). Scripted & shot like a broadcast of a wrestling promotion every disturbed ten year old wishes existed, Monster Brawl is camp cinema at its finest.

-Brandon Ledet

The Flintstones & WWE: Stone Age SmackDown (2015)

March 7, 2015 / swampflix / 4 Comments

As I noted in my review of Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery, professional wrestling & animation were practically made for one another. Their shared love for campy violence, garish costumes, and corny jokes make them a heavenly pair. Crossing over the WWE brand with characters from the classic Hanna-Barbera universe is even more of a genius move, as it allows for some of wrestling & animation’s most over-the-top personalities to coexist in a single space. Characters like Scooby-Doo, Barney Rubble, The Undertaker, and “The Devil’s Favorite Demon”/”See No Evil” Kane are ridiculous enough in isolation. When they share a screen it’s downright magical (in the trashiest way possible). In Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery this pungently cheesy combination allowed for John Cena’s superhero strength & Sin Cara’s apparent ability to fly match the Mystery, Inc. gang’s seemingly supernatural monsters (in that particular case a “g-g-g-ghost b-b-b-bear”). In The Flintstones & WWE: Stone Age SmackDown the combo not only connects both The Flintstones’ Honeymooners-style comedy and the WWE’s complete detachment from reality with their roots in working class escapism, it also revels in the most important element in all of wrestling & animation, the highest form of comedy: delicious, delicious puns.

Let’s just get the list of Stone Age wrestler puns out of the way early. The Flinstones & WWE: Stone Age SmackDown features the likes of CM Punkrock, John Cenastone, Brie & Nikki Boulder, Marble Henry, Daniel Bryrock, Rey Mysteriopal, and Vince McMagma. CM Punk & Mark Henry even adapt their catchphrases to the Stone Age setting, calling themselves “The Best in the Prehistoric World” & “The World’s Strongest Caveman” respectively. Daniel Bryan makes no adjustments to his go-to “Yes! Yes! Yes!” chant (not a lot of room for wordplay there) but it’s put to great comical use anyway. Speaking of refusing to play along with the Stone Age puns, The Undertaker appears in Stone Age SmackDown simply as “The Undertaker”. I’m not sure if they had problems working a great pun in there (Try it at home. It’s a tough one.) but the side-effect is kind of charming anyway: it makes it seem as if The Undertaker has been alive forever, just sort of skulking around graveyards, waiting for a wrestling match.

In the Scooby-Doo crossover the WWE Superstars are already world famous and idolized, even more so than in reality; they even have their own WWE City complete with a Mount Rushmore style tribute to the championship belt. In The Flinstones crossover they’re just working class Joes (with impeccable physiques) that live milquetoast lives before a wrestling promotion is built around them. The wrestling promotion in question is FFE (Fred Flintstone Entertainment). Fred builds the enterprise from the ground up as a get-rich-quick scheme meant to fund a couples’ vacation to Rockapulco. As a WWE stand-in, FFE does a great job of poking fun at itself. At one point Fred is giving a pep-talk to his Superstars, urging them to “tear each other’s heads off . . . in a family-friendly way, of course,” satirizing WWE’s self-contradictory brand of PG violence. FFE differs in WWE in other ways, of course, as it’s a very small organization just trying its darnedest to put on a good show for the folks out there in the audience, which is a far cry from the real-life juggernaut’s billion dollar industry. There’s a good bit of blue-collar workplace humor towards the beginning of the film that recalls the The Flintstones’ Honeymooners roots and that vibe carries on nicely into the mom & pop wrestling promotion Fred creates once the plot picks up speed.

The only thing Stone Age SmackDown gets horrifically wrong from the original Flinstones series is Barney Rubble’s voice. The other characters aren’t perfectly imitated, but they’re at least passable. Barney is just not the same person at all, trading in his dopey baritone for a nasally “wise guy, eh?” voice that feels like a violation of the original character’s nature. The rest of the film is pretty much on point, though. In addition to the rock puns & working class humor mentioned above, the movie features enough Rube Goldberg contraptions, dinosaurs as appliances, visual gags (“We’ve got bigger fish to fry” is a pretty great one that you can probably imagine without the image), and swanky-kitsch music that feel true to the original cartoon. In a lot of ways, Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery brought the Hanna-Barbera characters to WWE’s world and Stone Age SmackDown is almost an exact reversal, with pro wrestlers making the time-traveling journey to Bedrock. There are a few modern updates to the Flintstones’ visual language (like wall-mounted TVs and computer tablets), but they don’t do much to distract from the show’s classic charms. In fact, the digital HD update provides the format a very vivid, vibrant look that intensifies the original series’ pop art appeal immensely.

Even though the movie is mercifully short it still makes time for fun tangents like CM Punkrock’s world-class promos, history’s first cage match (between The Undertaker & Barney Rubble of course), and some absurd sexual leering at “The Boulder Twins”. It’s a much quicker and less complicated film than the Scooby-Doo crossover and all the better for it. Plus, I really need these crossovers to work out long enough to get that Stardust Meets The Jetsons movie I’ve been clammering for. I desparately need that to happen so, as Fred puts it in Stone Age SmackDown, “Let’s yabba dabba do this” y’all. Keep these goofy wrestling cartoons coming.

-Brandon Ledet

Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery (2014)

March 6, 2015March 6, 2015 / swampflix / 6 Comments

Look out, garbage lovers & overgrown children everywhere. WWE Studios has officially gotten in the business of making cartoons. It’s a brilliant move by all accounts, since professional wrestling itself could be described as a sort of live-action cartoon. The garish costumes, over-the-top personalities, and campy approach to violence should all be familiar to fans of animation and the two worlds have, of course, crossed paths before. Wrestling cartoons have generally been Saturday morning cartoon fodder, with dire projects like Hulk Hogan’s Rock & Wrestling and ¡Mucha Lucha! bringing no discernable level of prestige to the genre. As the WWE is currently in its long-lived, so-called “PG Era” (in which the company intensely markets its content to children) and its movie-making division WWE Studios is churning out more feature-length content than ever before, it’s a beautiful work of synergy that the company has gotten into bed with Hana-Barbera for a few proper straight-to-video animation crossovers.

Last year’s gloriously titled Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery was the first of the WWE/Hanna-Barbera crossovers. In the film, which is more fun than it should be, the Mystery, Inc. gang is dragged to WrestleMania against their will by the overenthusiastic Shaggy & Scooby. The film sets up an interesting mark/smark divide here, as the characters engage with the product in a variety of different ways. At one end of the spectrum, Shaggy & Scooby are completely obsessed with WWE’s brand of sports entertainment, sinking endless time & energy into the company’s video games and worshiping the talent like living gods. Fred takes an interest in pro-wrestling as a subject for his photography, eager to take some “wicked action shots.” Daphne falls in love with wrestling’s masculine sexuality the second she witnesses a wrestler (John Cena, specifically) removing his shirt. Velma’s all the way on the other end of the mark/smark divide, attempting to engage with the product on a purely intellectual level. She researches the history of the sport in favor of actually losing herself in the matches until the sheer spectacle of the WrestleMania main event wins her over into a little bit of mark territory and she becomes a true fan. To be fair to Velma, it is an especially spectacular main event. John Cena, Kane, Sin Cara, Shaggy & Scooby all join forces to fight a gigantic robotic ghost bear or, as the boys would put it, a “g-g-g-ghost b-b-b-bear”.

The ghost bear is a formidable threat, but nothing too out of the ordinary considering the history of Mystery, Inc. What is out of the ordinary is the sheer amount of pro-wrestling personalities that get involved in the proceedings. In addition to Cena, Kane, and Sin Cara (who get the most screen time), the movie also includes the likes of Triple H, AJ Lee, Brodus Clay, Santino, The Miz, and The Big Show (as well as cameos from Sgt. Slaughter & Jerry “The King” Lawler curiously portrayed as if they were still in their youth). Ringside announcer Michael Cole even gets in on the fun (lamenting the loss of his “favorite” table when Big Show gets smashed through it), as does WWE chairman & CEO Vince McMahon. McMahon is treated like some kind of deity by the boys, who do a “we’re not worthy” Wayne’s World routine at the billionaire’s feet. However, despite McMahon’s idol worship, Sin Cara’s apparent ability to literally fly, “See No Evil” Kane’s portrayal as a true-to-life demon, and AJ Lee’s brute strength that earns her the boys’ fearful concession that she’s “like Kane with lipstick”, no one gets quite as much ego massaging as longtime face of the company John Cena. Cena’s persona as an unstoppable superhuman can get tiresome on a weekly televised basis, but it’s kind of adorable here. He can seduce a beautiful woman with the mere removal of his shirt, conquer Indiana Jones-sized boulders and undead bears with just his hands, and is an instant friend to everyone, because he’s just so gosh darned likeable. It would be sickening if it weren’t so ridiculous. On the raw end of that deal, The Miz is just utterly abused here. His character pops in for some occasional goofball comic relief, which is totally fair all things considered, but looks absolutely nothing like him. Just no resemblance at all to the money-maker. If it weren’t for the sound of his voice or the cartoonish narcissism it would be near impossible to tell it was him.

For fans of either Scooby-Doo or pro-wrestling, the movie should be a fairly easy sell. It’s not a mind-blowing feat of animation, but it is remarkably likeable. In some ways the WWE does glorify itself a bit here, even if it’s tounge-in-cheek. For example, within the story the company has its own fully-functioning WWE City, which features a Mount Rushmore style tribute to the heavyweight championship belt. At the same time, both Hanna-Barbera & WWE poke a good bit of fun at themselves as well. Shaggy jokes that the gang wears the same outfits every day, so they have no need to pack for their trip to WrestleMania and there are also surprising references to WWE City’s environmental impact on the forest surrounding it & more realistically, former wrestlers’ career-ending injuries. The film also features some ridiculous asides like Scooby wrestling mutated junk food in outer space and Sin Cara telling the gang “The Legend of the Bear” through interpretive dance. It’s a very silly, inconsequential movie all in all, so it’s difficult to fault it for any shortcomings. Personally, I look forward to the upcoming WWE/Hanna-Barbera crossovers (which include a Flinstones picture as well as a Scooby-Doo sequel) and hope that they’ll go on at least long enough for a Stardust Meets The Jetsons feature. That’s the dream anyway.

-Brandon Ledet

The Running Man (1987)

February 19, 2015February 19, 2015 / swampflix / 11 Comments

In honor of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s induction into the WWE Celebrity Hall of Fame, it seemed appropriate to revisit 1987’s The Running Man, a pro-wrestling meets dystopian sci-fi film that helped cement the actor as a cultural icon.

Some action movies feature exploding heads, but few include them by the end of the opening credits. In this violent video game of a movie, human heads are not only exploded in the opening sequence, they’re also burned, shot, impaled and electrified later on. All of this head-squashing takes place around Ben Richards, a former soldier being framed for the deaths of innocent women & children, as he becomes an unwilling contestant on a sadistic gameshow. Richards must fight his way through a gauntlet of assassins (each with their own wrestling-friendly gimmick personas like Fireball, Buzzsaw, Dynamo and Subzero) as bloodthirsty spectators, including grandmothers and children, watch on eagerly. The dystopian hell of Running Man is set in 2017, but thankfully the game shows of today have not sunk to the depraved levels predicted in the film (if you don’t include Fear Factor).

The original host of Family Feud, Richard Dawson, plays the show’s sleazy, always inebriated host in a performance that doesn’t feel far removed from how Dawson himself acted on his real-life gameshow (where he shamelessly kissed & fondled contestants). Dawson chews the scenery every time he’s on-screen, but is just one of the many memorable cameos in the film. Mick Fleetwood, the infamous drummer for Fleetwood Mac, also makes an appearance as a coked out revolutionary. Then there’s the former governor of Minnesota & pro wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura as Captain Freedom, who pummels Richards inside a steel death cage in the film’s best scene. As well as being the best, the death cage scene is also the film’s most violent, because in Running Man the two are one in the same.

Truth is, although Arnold’s protagonist in the main attraction, The Running Man never feels like his film. Easily upstaged by the bigger personalities around him, Ben Richards is one of the weaker roles of Arnold’s career. For most of the film he is simply there, acting like a dick until he has to step into action and kill something. He does have a few good one-liners, though, like the Arnold staple “I’ll be back” and my personal favorite, “I’ll tell you what I think of it: I live to see you eat that contract, but I hope you leave enough room for my fist because I’m going to ram it into your stomach and break your goddamn spine!” Despite the one-liners, even María Conchita Alonso (as Arnold’s standard girl-he-kidnaps-who-then-falls-for-him) gives a fiery performance with what little room she is allowed, sometimes outshining Arnold’s.

According to Wikipedia, Arnold stated that the director “shot the movie like it was a television show, losing all the deeper themes.” He is right in that The Running Man never really delves into the social satire that was present in the 1982 Stephen King novel the film was based on. Instead, the film is highly entertaining because of its over-the-top violence, breakneck pacing, and great cameos. I doubt King is a fan of professional wrestling, but the film adaption of The Running Man is like an ultra-violent WrestleMania. Vince McMahon would approve even if King & Schwarzenegger didn’t.

-James Cohn

Hercules (2014)

February 7, 2015 / swampflix / 3 Comments

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is the great WWE success story. When the juggernaut wrestling promotion tried its best to launch Hulk Hogan’s movie career with its first foray into film production, 1989’s No Holds Barred, the results were mixed. Hogan remains the most widely known household name in wrestling, but his movie career, which featured long-forgotten titles like Suburban Commando & Mr. Nanny, didn’t exactly pan out as planned. The Rock, on the other hand, basically launched WWE’s movie-making division all by his lonesome. His first three starring roles in The Scorpion King, The Rundown, and Walking Tall basically built WWE Studios from the ground up. The Rock’s world-class shit-talking skills & excessive mugging in his wrestling promos translated well to action stardom & he’s been the sole wrestler who’s been able to make a long-term career for himself on the big screen (though Bautista may be next in line).

The secret to Johnson’s success? He’s actually a damn good actor. He has a lot of weird, mostly untapped energy that can reach far beyond the limited roles he’s been landing. With early parts in action shlock like Doom & The Scorpion King, he’s proven himself to be one of the last Schwarzenegger-type muscle gods who manage to look convincing while kicking ass & dispensing pun-heavy quips indiscriminately. He’s perfectly suited for action movie roles, but he’s also being underserved in them. Riskier projects, like the more unhinged Southland Tales and Pain & Gain, have unleashed a different Dwayne Johnson altogether, one completely independent of the Schwarzeneggers & Van Dammes before him. He has a manic beast lurking under that confident exterior, just waiting to out-weird any other action star in the world, Stallone & Cage included.

Unfortunately, Hercules does not employ the offbeat wild-man Dwayne Johnson, but instead opts for the cookie-cutter action star The Rock. He’s in full Scorpion King mode here, hitting so many familiar Schwarzenegger beats that I assumed it was secretly a Conan the Barbarian remake that couldn’t secure the rights. Hercules’ opening narration plays like a trailer to a much better film, The Rock slaying a succession of giant, mystical beasts with ease. It slows down from there, limiting the action to a single episode of Hercules and his rag-tag crew of super-warriors leading an army into an epic battle, the exact kind of narrative you’d expect from vintage Conan the Barbarian story record. The movie has a sort of charm in its limited scope, especially in its lighthearted approach to mass violence and in The Rock’s natural magnetism. Most of Hercules’ best moments arise from The Rock’s inherent coolness. He just looks like a total badass as he wears a lion’s head as a crown, defeats wolves & charging horses with just his bare hands, and smashes a hooded executioner to pulp with a smaller, less talkative rock. Hercules makes for a much more convincing, enjoyable superhero adaptation/reboot than the similarly reductionist films I, Frankenstein & Dracula Untold, but in the end a lot of your enjoyment will hinge on how much you enjoy spending time with The Rock, as opposed to how much room Dwayne Johnson is given to be his enchanting self.

The transition from babyface wrestler to action hero makes total sense. Both roles require a convincing “good guy” to put the world’s depthless “bad guys” in their place. The Rock has had a few great action roles over the past decade or so, and with the exception of a couple missteps like The Tooth Fairy, he’s managed to avoid the pitfalls of Hulk Hogan’s career path. It’s just that after watching what a stranger, more nuanced Dwayne Johnson can do, it’s worrisome that he’s still making something this close to The Scorpion King at this point in time. Hercules can be a fun, one-time viewing for the audience, but let’s hope it’s not a damning career-trajectory indicator for Johnson. He can do so much more when given the chance.

-Brandon Ledet

How to Play the See No Evil (2006) Drinking Game

February 1, 2015 / swampflix / 4 Comments

One of the earliest (and trashiest) trends we’re developing here in Swampflix’s infancy is a focus on pro wrestling movies. We’ve even designated a Wrestling Cinema page, where you can find all reviews & articles for movies somehow related to pro wrestlers or to “sports entertainment” in general. I expect that over time (if it hasn’t happened already) we’ll end up spending way too much time & energy poring over the details of even the most dire entries in Wrestling Cinema, whether or not they deserve the effort. Spoiler: they typically don’t.

Even this early in our run, we’ve already spilled entirely too much ink on one particular Wrestling Cinema franchise: the pro wrestler Kane’s slasher vehicle See No Evil. Between our reviews of See No Evil (2006) & See No Evil 2 (2014), we’ve written ~1,500 words about a very simple set of films. The “tl;dr” version: the first one is surprisingly fun & nasty; the second one is a waste of your time. Even though we’ve already covered too much ground with the franchise at this point, there is one detail I feel we shouldn’t have skipped over: the See No Evil drinking game.

We’ve previously mentioned the awful dialogue, terrible acting, and “vile, hateful” teenage characters that populate the first See No Evil, but not in great detail. Instead of providing the teens meaningful exchanges or character arcs, most of the film’s dialogue consists of long strings of insults. Characters call each other “sluts” & “assholes” with an alarming frequency. The script’s dependency on insults would be an annoyance if the insults weren’t both so over-the-top in their prevalence and also surprisingly appropriate for the film’s overall nasty look & tone. The insults are so constant, so overwhelming that it becomes difficult to notice anything else (besides, you know, the brutal murders).

Which brings me to the rules of the See No Evil drinking game:
1) Drink whenever a character insults someone.

That’s it. You should have plenty to drink with just this one prompt. There may be some questions to suss out before the game begins like “Does it count if they insult an inanimate object or a building?” and “Does murdering someone count as an insult?” My own thoughts on that second question: in regards to this particular group of degenerates, murder might be more of a favor or a blessing.

Note: We only suggest playing this game with the first See No Evil movie. This is not only because the characters in See No Evil 2 are much kinder to each other, but also because we don’t recommend you watch the sequel at all.

Play safe!

-Brandon Ledet

See No Evil 2 (2014)

January 31, 2015 / swampflix / 1 Comment

A lot can change in 8 years. Technology & cultural tastes are especially vulnerable to the passage of time. Fashion, language, entertainment, and modes of communication & business can go through massive transformations in just 8 months, let alone 8 years. 2014’s See No Evil 2, the sequel to 2006’s See No Evil, makes the mistake of ignoring these transformations entirely. It sets the lackluster sequel on the same night as the gross-out slasher original, but makes no attempts at continuity in the characters’ appearances or electronics. In one movie, they’re texting on bejeweled flip phones and in the next they’re discussing what’s trending on Twitter. It’s jarring.

The continuity issues don’t stop there. The two films are vastly different in both the stories they tell & the tone they tell them in. At the end of See No Evil there are 3 survivors from the hotel massacre & the supernaturally strong serial killer, Jacob Goodnight (ugh), is ultimately defeated when his heart is impaled. See No Evil 2 is set in the morgue that accepts the bodies from the hotel & there are no survivors to speak of. The killer’s eye is still missing from an attack in the first film, but his not-impaled heart is still beating in an early ambulance scene. There’s also no mention of the fact that he literally has maggots for brains in the first film or that his favorite hobby is to collect eyeballs as trophies of his kills. The eyeball collecting is a curious detail to ignore, since the pun in the film’s title is almost entirely dependent upon it. Without the eyeballs there is very little connecting the two films besides the title and the Jacob Goodnight character. Even the actor/professional wrestler who plays Jacob Goodnight is billed differently in the two films. In See No Evil he is simply billed as his wrestling persona “Kane”. In See No Evil 2, he’s graduated to Glenn “Kane” Jacobs.

Of course, consistency is not necessary to making an enjoyable slasher film starring a professional wrestler. It’s conceivably possible that the two drastically different See No Evil movies could peacefully co-exist as entertaining, loosely connected gore fests. As James pointed out in his review, the first See No Evil is surprisingly fun. It boasts “a sick charm because it knows exactly the kind of film it is and doesn’t pretend to be anything more.” See No Evil 2 unfortunately loses sight of the original’s tried-and-true cheap thrills slasher format and mistakenly attempts a slow burn suspense that is frankly beyond its limited reach. The first See No Evil is a surprisingly nasty gore fest overstuffed with vile, hateful characters that viciously get their comeuppance one at a time. See No Evil 2, by comparison, is overstuffed with bland couples sussing out their even blander relationship dynamics until they’re uneventfully killed off-screen. By the time a throat is finally slit in plain view an hour into the film & Goodnight discovers the morgue’s stash of bone saws, I felt like a sick bastard for cheering. Without any other entertaining element in play, I had a terrible case of unsatisfied bloodlust during most of the run time.

There are a few lonely bright spots in See No Evil 2. Kane, excuse me, Glen “Kane” Jacobs is visually terrifying enough in real life to be an imposing figure in a slasher movie without much help, something the first See No Evil uses to its advantage. See No Evil 2 goes the extra mile and costumes him in a plastic burn victim mask & black rubber apron that does wonders for his appearance. When he pauses to inspect his new, “improved” visage in a bathroom mirror he has a fairly hilarious “What have I become?” moment that I got a kick out of. The film’s central idea of throwing a surprise birthday party in a morgue also has an amusing charm to it, as does Kane taking chair shots to the head, something he’s been well-trained to do in the wrestling ring. Like most things in this franchise, though, the chair shots gag is exploited much more effectively in the first film, which makes the moment a little hollow. Similarly, by the time See No Evil 2’s sole over-the-top gore arrives in the last ten minutes (the killer is pumped full of vibrantly blue embalming fluid) the film had already asked for too much patience & instead of the “Awesome!” reaction it was looking for, I found myself thinking “Finally!”, something I didn’t experience with the first film.

Of course, it’s a little unfair to constantly compare the entertainment value of See No Evil 2 to that of its predecessor, but it’s a comparison that the film itself encourages often. There are frequent flashbacks & recaps of the first film in its sequel, unwisely reminding me that the product was actually fun at one time. In these recaps it becomes overwhelmingly clear just how different the two movies are. In 2006 See No Evil was imitating the recent successes of ultraviolent (in an icky way) horror flicks like Hostel & Saw, which allowed it to supplant minor details like a decent script or a reason to exist with detached eyeballs and buckets of gore. In the 8 years since its release Hollywood horror had softened greatly, aiming its sights on a PG-13 crowd, playing down bloodshed in order to sell more tickets. Instead of ignoring this trend like it ignored the continuity in the films’ story, the See No Evil franchise also softened in those 8 years. You can see the difference in See No Evil 2’s flashbacks, the dank squalor of the first film clashing with the clinical cleanliness of the second.

Although the films are ostensibly set on the same night, the 8 years that separate them are impossible to ignore. Updating See No Evil 2 for the watered-down 2014 slasher aesthetic was a huge mistake. It was a franchise well-suited for 2006’s often disgusting brand of gross-out gore & torture. Remove its mean streak and there’s not much left besides a bald, one-eyed wrestler in a plastic mask gloomily gazing in a bathroom mirror, asking himself “What have I become?”

-Brandon Ledet

Knucklehead (2010)

January 30, 2015January 30, 2015 / swampflix / 1 Comment

Who is the target audience for Knucklehead? Is it for kids? There are plenty of fart jokes & slapstick antics, but there are also homosexual innuendos, religious mockery, and racial stereotypes. Is it for fans of professional wrestling? The movie features WWE superstar Paul Wight (aka Big Show/The Giant), but the fight scenes are too infantile to whet any wrestling fan’s appetite, the climactic fighting competition consisting of a half-assed wrestling montage accompanied by generic nu metal. But probably the most important question for the sake of this review is: Is this movie for anyone? The answer is definitely not.

The first time we meet the 7 foot, 450lbs hero at the center of Knucklehead, he is descending from the rafters during his orphanage’s rendition of The Wizard of Oz. He is playing the Good Witch, but the gentle giant soon ruins the production by clumsily destroying the set. Why is a full grown man still an orphan? Simply, the film explains no one wants to adopt a giant. It becomes apparent, however, that Walter’s below average intelligence & awful luck are the true reason. In his very next scene he burns down the orphanage’s kitchen by throwing grease on a raging fire. What a knucklehead! Inexplicably, the orphanage has no fire insurance and must raise the money quickly or all the poor orphans will be evicted. But in an act of divine intervention, Walter is pushed through a stained glass window at the exact moment that former MMA fighter turned promoter Eddie Sullivan is asking God to wash away his gambling debts. It’s a miracle! Eddie sees the potential in him and they soon embark on a road trip to New Orleans for the “Beatdown on the Bayou”, a fighting tournament with a $100,000 prize that will solve both their problems. Their journey basically amounts to a series of formulaic gags involving farts, poops, and urine (sometimes simultaneously), that are punctuated by lessons about family, determination, and faith.

It’s obvious the filmmakers were imitating the Farrelly Brothers with this attempt to mix sweet, light-hearted comedy with gross-out humor but, unlike the Farrellys, they don’t give us any characters to care about or any truly gross-out moments. I watched a human giant flatulate, act silly and beat people and I still wasn’t entertained. That’s pretty sad. Knucklehead does have some offensive moments, but not the good kind. As is standard for a lot of WWE entertainment, the minority characters are stereotypical and the butt of a lot of the jokes. We encounter a trucker smuggling Mexicans; a Jewish boxer Sugar Ray Rosenburg, the Monster of Matza, who Walter is convinced to beat down because “That guy hates Christmas”; and a smooth hustler black child that runs boxing fights out of his dad’s house. The movie pretends to have themes like the power of hope and believing in miracles but at its heart it is deeply cynical: Sister Francesca agrees to let Walter fight only after her cut of the purse is mentioned; Eddie’s love interest who works at the orphanage, Mary, reveals she used to be a stripper; a Jewish bookie runs fights out of a synagogue.

Will Patton, Dennis Farina, and Wendie Malick are all excellent character actors who have done great work in the past, but every time one of them was on the screen in Knucklehead I sat perplexed, asking “Why are you in this movie?” There is no point in hiring talented actors if there is nothing interesting for them to say. Case in point: Eddie’s statement “What do you mean the engine’s smoking?” as an engine is billowing smoke. Paul Wight is likable enough, but can’t be expected to carry a feature length film after the poop jokes outwear their welcome. Not even a mildly entertaining bear fight, reminiscent of Hercules in New York, can save this dumb, poorly written dud.

I feel like a Knucklehead for having sat through this movie.

Knucklehead is currently streaming on Netflix.

-James Cohn