No Holds Barred Script vs. Movie

No Holds Barred: The Script: Act II

When we last left our hero Ripper, he was making men crap their pants. Next scene: a French restaurant.

Sam and Ripper are seated in a corner table and Sam indicates she was not sure if Ripper was going to like this place and hopes there is something on the menu he can like. An “effete waiter sashays up to their table” (them’s the script, folks) and speaks with a heavy French accent. Sam orders, but Ripper studies the menu. The waiter decides Ripper is too dumb to understand the menu (?) and suggests Ripper order a cheeseburger and a hot dog instead. Ripper then finally starts his order… in get this… French! Ooh. Roasted! But wait, there’s more. Ripper keeps up the order, going on, ordering four items, as the waiter fidgets. Finally, the waiter admits he is not French and speaks in perfect English and does not even know French.

Ripper then goes to the kitchen, where he is greeted with cheers. Because he is a famous wrestler? Nope.

Busboys remove Ripper’s jacket and the chef steps up and anoints Ripper with a toque, and Ripper takes charge of the kitchen, “like a maestro.” He slices, dices, stirs, tastes and leads the “epicurean symphony” at the end of which “the kitchen staff gives him a standing ovation.”

…

Let’s pause to absorb. Ripper is a champion wrestler, whose matches help NTN skyrocket to be the best rated network, he energizes the marketing department, the ladies fall in love with him – like instantly, he rides a Harley, can beat up four men at the same time – even if they are armed with pipes, chains and brass knucks, he recognizes antique furniture and can spot a fake at a glance, he speaks French, and he is also apparently an accomplished French chef who regularly takes over kitchens to prepare a four course dinners. Hogan commissioned this script and is alleged to have rewritten it, so the draft I have is per Hulk Hogan’s own admission something he himself wrote. Don’t worry, it will get better, and by that I mean much worse.

Meanwhile, back at the table, Sam waits impatiently, but have no fear for the Chef, followed by the humbled waiter wheels up a cart “on which sits Ripper’s incredible meal.” Ripper appears as well, and is thanked by the Chef for his recipes. That’s right, the ole’ Ripper taught the Chef how to make the food off the Ripper’s recipes. Sam is impressed. By the way, what are the odds that Sam picked the one French restaurant in town where Ripper knows the Chef and runs the kitchen? Or does Ripper do this at multiple places? Is he like the Kwai Chang Caine of French cuisine, going from place to place, beating down mooks in the ring and satiating his soul by making incredible French food afterwards? I mean, I would totally watch that on Netflix if someone were to make it. Just saying.

Back to Brell. He and his two minions Unger and Orbach, approach a “sleazy basement bistro.” I don’t think I ever been to a sleazy bistro, but am willing to give it a try. The establishment is called Spike’s Bar, where a grimy poster announces “TONITE AT SPIKE’S – NO HOLDS BARRED TOUGH GUY CHALLENGE.” Hey, that’s the script’s name, kinda. The minions of Brell are scared, but he thinks you never know what you can find in a place like this, this is not because Brell is fearless but because Brell’s ego is so large as to think he can overcome anything and anyone. And that is the one consistent trait of Brell in Acts I and II and it really does center his character. Inside the bistro, we see a dark and dingy “blue collar bar.” The jukebox plays country and western and in the center is “a crude, makeshift octagonal ring.” I am for one shocked Hulk Hogan did not claim he had invented the octagon that UFC uses due to his writing of this script. Humble of him. In the ring a pair of “headbangers” are beating each other bare knuckles. I am not sure the author knows what “headbangers” are, but maybe he’s being literal? As in, they bang heads of others? Let’s let it play out.

(Future Greg: yes, that is what the script meant, the film actually clears it up better).

A raunchy waitress (that is literally her script name/designation) approaches and when Unger asks to be seated, Waitress makes them for cops, but when they deny it, she uses a derogatory name for homosexuals and tells them, “The gay bar’s across the street.” Them’s the jokes, folks. In the ring, the headbangers are beating on each other to the crowd’s delight, as Brell looks on, intrigued, and his minions are horrified at the brutality of it all. Unger wonders where the referee is, and a local patron tells him that the ref stays outside the ring and explains short of murder, it’s anything goes, and the last man standing wins. Brell beams, “Those are my kind of rules.” After attempting to pay for their drinks with a credit card and causing a faux-pas for it for it (cash only, pal!), Unger is threatened with bodily violence by a (different) waitress who promises her brother will rip their lips off. The brother is simply described as a Neanderthal. Once more Brell takes charge and produces a hundred dollars and tells the waitress her brother can keep the change if he beats down the last man standing in the ring, which the brother does, with gusto. Naturally Brell’s minions are horrified by the violence some more, but Brell eyes the cheering masses and says this is what his network needs. Unger is mortified (why does Brell keep such a wet blanket around?), “These people would cheer a hanging.” To which Brell rejoins, “Exactly. That’s the beauty of it.” Disgusted, Unger goes to use the lavatory, which is then described in detail, as being disgusting. Unger’s pal Orbach joins him at the trough (no separate urinals) and Unger predicts “Never in a million years will Brell get this on the air.”

Cut to Brell standing on the steps of his United Network corporate headquarters and announcing his new show “No Holds Barred Battle of the Tough Guy Challenge.” A tourney will be held at “Spike’s Bar, downtown.” Hang on, is this a national network, or regional? The action seems to take place in only one town, and Brell doesn’t name the town at all. Brell announces that the winner will get $100,000, tax free. Meanwhile, across town, we are shown various locations featuring such tough guys as Klondike Kramer, who is working out in a seedy gym, and hearing the announcement. Then there’s a Hell’s Angel named Brock Chiseler, who crushes walnuts with his bare hand and eats them shell and all. There is a construction worker Ernie Biggs who works the compressor drill one handed. And junkyard forklift operator (huh?) Bulldog McPherson.

But all these terrifying men pale in comparison with a con in the Iron Pit prison yard, where pumping iron cons all scramble out of the path of an ominous shadow. “We never see his face. Only quick cuts of his body. Incredibly huge biceps. Tree trunk neck. Treacherous hands.” Wait, how can one’s hands be depicted to be treacherous? Does he have a Benedict Arnold tattoo on one hand and a Quisling on the other? We catch “a glimpse of one his cold blooded eyes. We see him jerk the heaviest weights. He makes a sound like a wild animal.” He is named Zeus. As introduction to a big-bad go, it is effective.In the warden’s office, the warden reviews the document before him. He hears the clank of chains. Manacled feet appear. It is Zeus. The warden is disgusted that the hippies at the parole board tell him that Zeus has served enough time, but if he had his druthers, Zeus would stay locked up forever. Warden slides the papers over to Zeus, who grabs the document and the warden shrinks in fear.

At some sound stage, Sam uses a pay phone to tell someone that all is fine and she has it under control and that he is here. He is Ripper. And he is doing a commercial for a computer. The director tells him what to do: he is to hit two keystrokes and the computer screen will light up and the printer starts up and he will plug the company that makes… something. It is not clear. Anyway, Ripper is to hit two keys, and then the printer will work. Cameras roll, and as Ripper hits the two keys, nothing works. Ripper quickly identifies the problem is with the computer, but the commercial director tells him to just try it again. Same thing happens. A tech guy is called, and looks about, and Ripper tells him, “You might check whether you’re in serial or parallel interface mode.”

That’s right. In addition to being a wrestling champion, French chef, great amateur wrestler, noted badass, antique furniture expert, Harley rider and sex symbol, the Ripper knows IT, because of course he does! This is Hulk Hogan commissioning this story, at least, or personally writing it out himself. This is what Hogan wants people to think he is, does and can accomplish.

By the way, I am guessing the fella who wrote that bit of Ripper’s dialogue once tried to use a non-IBM printer with an IBM PC in the early ’80s. Just a hunch. Anyway, the technician ignores the Ripper and tells all it is busted. Naturally Ripper fixes it himself. No applause from everyone this time around, but Sam is once more intrigued. How could she not be? The man knows French cuisine, fixes PC and fights people for a living.

Brell pulls up in his limo at Spike’s bar. There is a new neon sign over the door: UNITED NETWORK PRESENTS: LIVE, FROM SPIKE’S BAR: THE NO HOLDS BARRED TOUGH GUY CHALLENGE. Inside, the scum of the Earth prepares to do battle as Brell gazes on them with delight, he naturally gets in the ring and once more repeats the name of the contest. One by one, the men do battle with each other, as the crowd of regulars, the curious and the TV tech look on in disgust. The fella who seems to be doing the best is the king of the regulars – Neanderthal. Then the door is slammed open and Zeus wanders inside, backlit by the searchlights from outside on the street that were used to advertise the show in the bar. This is something I find interesting in the screenplay – its uneven attempts to put a modicum of realism into the proceedings.

Zeus goes towards the ring, a Production Assistant tries to get in his way. She is pie faced slammed into the ground. And we finally get the shot of Zeus’s face: “Savage. Scarred. Bitter.” He gets to the ring, and the Ref shoots a look to Brell, who locks eyes with Zeus and likes what he sees. “Let him fight,” the would-be emperor of cable TV commands. Zeus steps inside and lays waste to all the colorfully named tough guys. Back at Ripper’s house, Randy and his High School Sweethearts hang out, while Randy’s wiener pal Craig watches TV alone, forever alone. Craig is watching the battle and calls all to come watch with him. Naturally, Randy and his harem go over to watch as Zeus dismantle Brock Chisler. In the kitchen, Charlie cooks and sings to himself, and then wanders into the room and “can’t believe his eyes. He looks closer. His worst nightmare.” Back at the bar, Zeus has only one challenger remaining – Neanderthal. Zeus beats on him, badly, as Brell beams looking at the horrified faces, and the TV commentator says he is going to be sick. Ripper arrives, with his flight bag (okay, so there is more than one town, and he traveled by air to the commercial shoot, okay). Charlie, still in his worst day-mare, does not notice Ripper. Ripper inquires and finds Charlie has a tragic backstory involving Zeus, for Zeus was the man he was training prior to Ripper and Zeus had it all, strength, speed, and the skills, but he was just too dang crazy and Charlie cuts ties after a month, and then he heard Zeus killed a man after the bell. At no point does Charlie say the name of the man, just calling him by pronouns. Craig decides this is the best time to ask Randy if Ripper could take the fella, and even young Randolph is not sure though he makes sure to say “Yes, of course.” The Ring Announcer in the bar is ready to proclaim Zeus the winner, but knows not his name, so Zeus takes the mic and in “a long, vile whisper” says his name. “The name echoes.” Ripper stares into the TV and Zeus seems to stare back at him. Eye to eye.

The next day at UTN, Brell is all smiles and his minions bask in his victory. “The overnights are in. We were number one in our time slot, earning a 24 rating and a 39 share.” Whoa there, a 24/39 would put the “No Holds Barred Battle of the Tough Guys” up there with the biggest made-for-TV movies in the US in the 80s. More impressive still, this is an ongoing TV series, not a one-off TV event, so that puts it up there with Cheers, Roseanne and the Cosby Show and above Monday Night Football. Sadly, there is a fly in Brell’s ointment. Even as his minions applaud, he notices two refuseniks. One is a family values guy and he hates what the network has become and after 22 years of service tenders his resignation. The other is unhappy over all the negative publicity. Brell counters by saying people may have hated it, but they watched. Oh, and to stifle any mutiny, he brings Zeus into the boardroom, in case anyone wants to talk smack to him directly. All are cowed, but Zeus does not want to be here. Brell ignores Zeus’s objections and keeps yapping about how his show “is going to put Ripper’s show right into the toilet.” Zeus reacts at Ripper’s name and Bell picks up on it.

While the whole thing is still bad, I really do like how Zeus was introduced, and it is interesting to note how Brell is manipulating him even as Brell is being oblivious to things and staying true to his character. The dialogue is still atrocious, and the movie world makes not a lot of sense, but some lines are genuinely funny, mostly Brell’s. Let’s see where it goes.

Up next, a shoot on location, inside an “industrial icehouse,” where a parka wearing announcer announces the newest challenger to Zeus, one Icepick Perkins, who wears “filthy longjohns, a tight turtleneck and insulated boots.” Quite a look that. Zeus appears, bare chested, “oblivious to the cold” and makes short work of Perkins. So the fights are now in an enclosure of some kind, on location? Did we already discard the eight sided ring? Brell watches the ratings go up and gloats. Meanwhile, in another sound stage, the Ripper shoots another commercial, this time involving babies in a nursery. The onset Baby Wrangler (that’s her name/title in the script) cannot get a baby to calm down to shoot the commercial. Three guess who can. Go on. You have three tries. That’s right, Ripper! Babies love him. As do babes. A distracted Sam answers a phone call and says she will call back. Ripper does the commercial and the baby loves him as he changes its diaper like a pro. Man, is there anything he cannot do? Fail. He cannot fail, me lads.

Backstage, Ripper wants to get some food and this time kiboshes Sam’s attempt at an upscale joint that serves Italian food. “No more waiters with accents. This time I’ll choose the place,” Ripper demands. He takes her to a “classic 1950s aluminum siding diner in the bad part of town.” The owner is Sadie, described by the script as “all 200 pounds of voluptuous woman, stuffed in a tight-fitted waitress uniform.” Wowzers. Sadie knows Ripper from back in the day, and tells Sam that Ripper is quite the man, because of course characters only exist to fight Ripper, praise him, be awed by him, and/or serve as his love interest. Meanwhile, Sam tries to advance the plot with all the cunning of Baldrick. She says, “I’m not so sure this place fits the image we’re working on for you.” “What do you mean,” asks Ripper. “I don’t know,” answers Sam. “Instead of you, I could picture that new fighter here. What’s his name… Zeus.” Ripper says that Zeus does not belong anywhere, when two armed robbers burst in and try to hold up the joint. One of the men makes the mistake of laying his hands on Sadie, and Ripper beats on them with a barstool and stuffs one man into a dish washer. Well, at least they are keeping the action snappy.

Next up, a scene from the 1950s, as Ripper and Sam go to check into a hotel, but wait for it – there is only one room left, and the rest of the hotels in the area are sold out. There was a snag with the reservations. Sam frets, but Ripper says they’ll take the room. In their now shared room, Sam gets defensive and pretty much accuses Ripper of wanting to have his fiendish ways with her, but Ripper wants none of that. Sam goes to change in the bathroom, while Ripper takes out a roll of tape and divides the room in half with a sheet hanging over the bed, with each of them having a side. Sam braces and exits to find the Cotton Wall. She is in her frilly nightgown. Ripper is his gym shorts. So, ya know, mood. Ripper shows off the wall and they agree to stay on their side of the bed. Then, a scene introduces the concept of masturbation to the Hogan fans. Sam tries to sleep but hears rhythmic movement of the bed and heavy breathing, coming from Ripper’s side. She looks over to find his feet on the bed and his hands on the carpet, doing push-ups. His muscles glisten and she stares and Ripper catches her looking. Ripper finishes his workout, turns over into bed and the legs of the bed on his side give out, collapsing from under the weight of so much man. Sam’s side of the bed tilts up on an incline and she lands atop Ripper. Ripper makes a joke, Sam tries to roll away, but keeps rolling back onto him. Ripper makes more jokes, and Sam accuses Ripper of arranging the whole thing. Hurt, Ripper leaves, saying he will sleep on the couch. For her part, Sam nervously digs out a phone number, grabs a phone and starts to dial, reconsiders and dials again. Cut to Brell screaming at someone in his office about failing to do a favor for him, and that the person called him and said that their heart is telling them what they are doing is wrong and that they can’t do it anymore. The person is Sam, the mole. Brell goes to hit Sam, but she ducks and scrambles out of the office. Dames, eh?

On a construction site onsite location shoot, Zeus fights construction worker Rebar Lawless. I love the names, script, keep ’em coming. Craig sneaks onto the site, with Ripper’s young brother Randy to watch the proceedings. Randy posits it is a bad idea, but Craig tells him not to be a chicken as they won’t get caught. Hang on, Randy was the hothead, wasn’t he? It was Craig who was a wiener and wanted to get Randy to get his head in the game. I mean, yes, Craig saw the Zeus fight first on TV and called over Randy, but that wasn’t dangerous – it was catching a program on TV. This is sneaking onto a closed set at a construction site to watch Zeus fight in person. It should be Randy telling Craig they should check out this guy live to see what sort of threat he represents to Ripper, and wet blanket Craig telling Randy he has a bad feeling about this. Come on, script, you are screwing up simple things. Randy and Craig watch Zeus dismantle the construction worker, and cameras catch sight of them. Brell, in the control truck (why would the head of the network be on a remote shoot?) spots them and orders Unger to have the security goons bring the lads. Craig and Randy try to run by are stopped and herded by Unger the Minion of Brell and a pair of security guards. Brell goads Randy about seeing Zeus in action. Randy keeps his mouth closed, so Brell says, “Too afraid to speak up? That’s exactly what I’d expect from Ripper.” Wait, is Ripper a last name? That line seems weird. Anyway, them’s fighting words and Randy says he saw what he saw and that Zeus is sick, so Brell brings Randy and Craig to meet Zeus and tell him that to his face. Zeus is changing in the lockerroom, his shirt is off and “his body is like a block of granite. Scars and tattoos.” Uh-huh. Anyway, the boys are scared to say anything, so Brell rips open Randy’s shirt to reveal a Ripper T-shirt underneath. Zeus reacts. Brell tells Zeus young Randolph is the brother of Ripper. Zeus gets closer. “Randy cranes his necks (sic) to look up into Zeus’s vile visage. Zeus drools and slobbers onto Randy’s face.” Zeus calls Randy’s brother “yellow.” Ooh, snap.

Cut to Charlie’s gym, where Randy is working out like a madman. Ripper comes in and senses a disturbance in the Force. Randy tells him what happened and adds that after Zeus said what he said, Randy wanted to call him a liar, but he was scared. Ripper assures him he did the right thing. At Sam’s apartment, a nervous Sam paces and Ripper strolls in, invited. The TV is on in the background. The script tells us Sam turned on the evening news to get her mind off things. Sam confesses to Ripper that Brell hired her to obtain information on Ripper, she was game, thinking that was it, but it dawned on her that Brell wanted to more – he wanted to own Ripper and destroy him. Oh Vince, oh Vince and your paranoia about Ted Turner stealing your talent, in the Spring of ’88. Anyway, Sam begs forgiveness, but Ripper says he forgave her the other day. When he was checking them out from the hotel, he saw the phone number on the bill, realized it was Brell’s and put two and two together. Because of course he did, he’s smarter than Batman and more powerful than Superman, remember? Anyway, Ripper intuits that Sam quit Brell and has had enough. He clarifies forgave her for that, but he did not forgive her for breaking the bed. Yuck, yuck, ha-ha. This naturally leads to playful banter and soon that leads to sexy time, with the two kissing and just as they try to progress, the TV blares an important announcement: Zeus has challenged Ripper, with Zeus on TV screaming it out. And in a nice call back (look, I’ll take what the script can give me), once more Ripper is facing Zeus via TV as he first did when he saw him destroy a fella.

At some high school football field, Ripper plays around with kids, because he loves charities, and the script literally tells us that. The kids are a cheap prop for danger, for Zeus comes on a helicopter, with Brell. Brell calls out Ripper right there on the spot to fight Zeus, but seeing all the scared children, Ripper stands down, because this ain’t the place. Brell immediately calls out Ripper as not being brave or good enough to defeat Zeus, and proclaims Zeus the champion of the world. Hang on, of what? Ripper is a wrestler and that much we know. Zeus is a fighter. Did the script just invent a grand unified grappling and combat arts championship? Because, man, then it is ahead of its time. With the grandstand challenge denied and a championship created out of nothing, Brell and Zeus leave by helicopter. In his (ghostwritten) autobio, Hogan said he was deathly afraid of helicopters. Though that may be another weird tale told by Hogan to appear interesting. If he does have that particular phobia, then did he write this scene to show Ripper at his most vulnerable? All wrestlers are method actors by definition. Perhaps this was Hogan’s way to ensure he would be ready for the scene. Touching really.

In an underground garage of an apartment building, Sam leaves her car and is confronted by a man Ripper beat up by the limo sent by Brell. The goon assaults Sam’s grocery bags and is implied to have designs for her body. She flees and tries to fend him off, but he paws at her clothes tearing them (look, it’s in the script). Then, “the awesome unmistakeable (sic) sound of a Harley-Davidson is heard.” That’s right, Ripper is here.

He uses the bike to scoop up the Rapist with its handlebars, hold on to him by the scruff of his leather jacket and dunks him into an open manhole cover, quipping “Going down.” Because that’s how one deals with rapists. Ripper did more to beat up an armed robber and a man trying to assault him with a lead pipe. Ripper then gets to Sam, and pulls her into his arms. We are left to infer this is Brell trying to settle things, but we never see him give the order. And while the script assures us we recognize the Rapist as one of the thugs who tried to assault Ripper, it was over an hour ago in the film running time, as written, and we only saw the goof get smacked around once or twice, if that, in the space of thirty seconds. A bit of a stretch.

At the high school, Randy bids adieu to his harem and Craig pulls out a poster, inviting the public to come see the world champion Zeus train at his private gym. Randy does not want to go, understandably. Craig eagerly says, “Everybody’s going. There’s no way anything could happen to us. Besides, you should keep an eye on this guy for Ripper.” Randy, meet idiot ball. Idiot ball, let Randy hold you to advance the plot. Let us count the ways this is dumb. First, once again we have made Craig the bad friend, and Randy reluctant, a follow up on the third scene with them, but opposite of the establishing one. Second, everybody is not in fact going. We just saw the harem walk off. We know that the harem and Randy hang out after school and Randy’s house, so we had to chase off the harem to advance this bit of stupidity, and we also contradicted Craig’s assumption. Third, last time Randy and Craig went to see Zeus, they got manhandled, detained and verbally assaulted. Even if Craig is an idiot, Randy is not, so how could he believe “There’s no way anything could happen to us.” Fourth, Ripper is not fighting Zeus, and has no wish to fight him per Ripper’s last actions. So why would young Randolph go see Zeus once more and on behalf of Ripper. It makes no sense. Also, I refuse that scene was written by a professional screenplay writer, because I – an amateur – could easily rewrite this abomination of a scene by two minor tweaks: include the harem, and have the blonde who crossed and uncrossed her legs goad Randy into going because she is too scared to see Zeus up close, but she will know she will be safe with young Randolph around and that’s why he goes along. Also, have Craig be the voice of reason and try to tell he shouldn’t, and rewrite previous scene as Randy going on his own, despite Craig’s advice. And that’s off the top of my head and upon second reading of this script. I know the credited writer of this shlock has only two credits to his name after this film came out, but still, he is a professional and has sold scripts prior. I cannot see him being so out of it as to write that scene as it appears. Here, I believe, are the grubby hands of amateurs.

Back to the plot. At Zeus’s “dark, spartan, basement gym,” a sizeable crowd of impressionable teenagers look on as Zeus works out, near an octagon ring. Brell fields questions from the audience. Orbach whispers into Brell’s ear about Randy and Craig making an appearance, and Brell asks for a volunteer to do some light sparring with Zeus. There are no takers. Zeus, for his part, looks up at Brell with disinterest and focuses on working out. The script has thus far not screwed up Zeus. He is a monster, but a monster of precise motivations and wants. He did not care to talk to executives, or spar with anyone. He’s here to destroy people in the ring. Brell picks out Randy, and all nearby take a step back, except Craig, who now tells Randy not do it. Stupid, stupid script. Randy takes a step forward as Brell goads him about being yellow like his brother… Ripper. This intrigues Zeus, who looks at the kid. The crowd for their part starts chanting “Ripper,” despite coming to see Zeus work out. Traitors. Randy takes off his shirt and leaps into the octagon. Zeus is not amused and gets in the ring. Randy does the five D’s of dodgeball to avoid Zeus, which only makes the fella mad. Zeus finally catches him, drags him into the middle of the ring, makes Randy kneel beneath him. Whoa there, movie. “Zeus puts one hand under Randy’s chin and the other on the top of his head. He starts to twist. Puts over the edge by chanting of the crowd, Zeus grinds Randy’s neck into a grotesque position and looks down in his face. He doesn’t see Randy.” He sees Ripper’s face staring back at him in defiance. “Completely out of his mind, he retwists the neck and snaps it. The grinding sound of crushed vertebrae silences the crowd.” Wow, that escalated quickly.

At Charlie’s gym, Charlie answers the phone and calls for Ripper, it is Craig calling. Outside the gym, a car drives up, screeches to a halt, throws open the back doors and throws out the body of Randy. What? That’s a mob hit. This was a well-publicized workout, and plenty of witnesses saw Randy get beat on by Zeus. Even if we assume some sort of waiver of responsibility was implicit in Randy stepping foot in the ring, and even if we assume authorities do not wish to press criminal charges for what transpired in the ring, because we’re in a place where sports related violence is condoned and ignored, like a hockey rink in Boston during the Canadiens games, then at least what happened afterwards would be criminal and all responsible for the dump would be jailed and sued into oblivion. I understand we live in a universe where a champion wrestler has his own show on TV where he defeats wrestlers on a network and draws boffo ratings for it, and is more famous than everyone else, but still, did the laws change. Are we in an alternate universe?

In the hospital, Ripper is alone at the end of the hallway and talks to himself about how it should have been him and not Randy. The doctor approaches. Randy will live, but he may be paralyzed, or as the doc puts it, “It seems that motor functions on his left side may be severely impaired.” Say, remember how the script mentioned on page two that the Ripper sign (“I Love You” meets “Hang Loose”) is always done by the left hand of the user? You don’t think that will now come into play for young Randolph to let us all know that all will be well by doing that sign, do ya? Inside the hospital room, Ripper talks to a still unconscious Randy, and talks about they will fight this together. In the corner he spots black roses and a card. “Get well soon. Zeus.” Oh snap. It’s on now. Ripper walks into the distance, with Sam trying to get to him, but being held back by Charlie, for a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Ripper goes into Zeus’s gym and tears it apart, as Brell taunts him via a speaker, overseeing the proceedings on the camera. Ripper spots the camera and takes it out with a weight. Brell involuntarily ducks it, but not before agreeing to have Zeus fight Ripper, on Brell’s terms. Before a giant press assemblage, Brell explains that in two weeks, Ripper will face Zeus on Brell’s United Network. In the hospital room, Ripper cares for Randy, in the gym, Zeus trains for his fight by pulverizing cinder blocks with his bare hands. I love me an ’80s training montage.

In his lair, Brell tells all how this fight will make his network number one. However, one man asks him what happens if Ripper wins, and Brell assures him that such a thing will not happen. Eeeevil. In the hospital, as gentle Ripper helps Randy have physical therapy, Zeus keeps doing Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV” stuff. But soon it is time for the day of the fight, at the UTN studio. Brell has his minions arrange something with an elevator for tonight. At the hospital, Randy gets wheeled out in a wheelchair by Ripper, who thinks having Randy in his corner will be really helpful, because screw Randy’s PTSD at having to be around the monster who disabled him, Ripper needs some emotional support brother, brother. Ripper is accompanied by Charlie, Craig, Randy and Sam. Ripper goes to the locker room, with Charlie. Sam, Craig and Randy go to a handicapped ramp, as told by an usher. Ripper preps for his match, with little words of wisdom from a worried Charlie. The handicapped ramp leads to an elevator, and a trap, for after Craig wheels out Randy, hired goons shove Sam back inside, get in with her and ride off. Craig then pushes Randy down a wheelchair “at top speed” to warn Ripper, while the goons drag Sam into Orbach’s office, where Orbach points out a huge closed circuit monitor for her to watch the show and the goons shove Sam into a chair, but do not otherwise restrain her. Hmm. In the office is also Unger, who phones Brell to tell him the elevator is now fixed. Brell is delighted and calls Ripper, who has been appraised by Randy and Craig of the shenanigans. Brell tells Ripper to make it look good for ten minutes and then take a dive, or else “you’ll be pushing twin wheelchairs. Do you hear me?” Brell laughs and hangs up. Ripper tells Charlie he has ten minutes to find Sam, and tells Craig to keep track of Randy and himself at ringside.

End of Act II.

Will Ripper prevail? Will Sam escape an easily escapable situation? Will Randy use his paralyzed left side to give Ripper their special sign to show he is no longer paralyzed? What will happen to Brell and Zeus? All these questions and more shall be answered in the next post. Stay tuned.

No Holds Barred: The Script: Act III

When we last left our hero, he found out his perfunctory love interest has been kidnapped and evil network executive wants him to throw the fight to the evil bad guy champion after ten minutes, else the love interest will be crippled. Our hero sent his trainer to find his perfunctory love interest, while he prepares to meet the bad guy champion in the ring.

The script goes into details describing the setup of the studio where the fight will take place, thus warning the reader the geography of the space will become important for what will transpire next. Brell is in a control room overlooking the octagonal ring (it finally makes its return, despite not being used in the other locations). The Commentator serves as a crappy exposition machine recapping how the fight will work (we just watched like five of them, script). The crowd is nicely dressed, which tells me either the writer watched the Dumont network TV wrestling back in the day or this is Vince trying to class up the joint for his own vision of things that never came. Ripper gets a chant going from the crowd as he enters and the commentator points out that Charlie is not with Ripper and how that is strange. First time I read this, I thought this meant this would alert Brell to be on the lookout for Charlie and send his minions to block him, but nope. It has no bearing on the plot. At all. Next up, Zeus enters the arena, all alone, and the script makes sure to note he has no one because he doesn’t want anyone, like thrice.

Back in Orbach’s office, Orbach and the Goons get ready to watch the fight, with kidnapped Sam seated with them, and we note one of the Goons twirls the key ring. The script assures us that there is no escape for Sam. Erm, there is actually plenty, but okay. We are setting improbable odds to overcome. Probable odds would read badly, I suppose. In the ring, Ripper and Zeus have a shoving match and then a fight. This was allegedly the masterpiece of Hogan’s fevered dream. And I can see Hogan’s fingerprints on it, kinda. Per Hogan ghostwritten autobiography, Hogan rewrote the fight sequence on “Rocky III” due to the fight choreographer not getting wrestling. That’s a tall tale as well, but Hogan did have experience with movie-fighting prior to this film, and the Zeus-Ripper fight follows a kind of a Hogan-Big Monster Bad Guy template, but very slowed down. As Ripper and Zeus do battle, Orbach and his goons are distracted, and Sam is able to escape, though there are a couple of false scares. The Goons and Orbach realize Sam is gone just as she escapes the office, with them giving chase. But oh noes, as Ripper looks out into the audience, he only sees Randy and Craig, and not Sam or Charlie and he begins to lose hope as the Commentator tells us that the non-stop action has been going on for ten minutes. Meanwhile, Sam has a stairwell chase scene with guards. Just as they corner her, Charlie drives a forklift into the lot of them and pins them to a wall, and off Charlie and Sam race to get to the studio where the match is being televised. Somehow, during the midst of all this, no one had the heart, guts or time to call Brell, and he keeps gloating up in the control booth overlooking the eight sided ring. Zeus is beating on Ripper, but just then Charlie and Sam enter the studio and Ripper sees her and fights back, just as Brell spots her as well and starts pounding on his control console before him, sending sparks flying and Techs skittering out of the room.

Zeus fights back from Ripper’s assault, rips out one of the eight posts encircling the ring and uses it as a sword to try to skewer Ripper. This was specifically referenced in Hogan’s book by the way. Ripper evades the post, and Zeus nearly destroys the ring with his penetration of it with the ring post. The corners of the ring start to collapse, just like legs of the bed upon which Ripper and Sam spent the night. In the midst of all this mess, Zeus grabs Ripper in the same neck crank hold he used to cripple young Randolph. Sam yells at the Ref to do something. The Ref enters the ring, because I suppose Zeus is trying to kill Ripper, and Zeus backhands him into oblivion and “snarls with delight and torques Ripper’s neck with all his strength.” Ripper falls on the canvas, convulsing. This convulsion will be instant familiar to any wrestling fan, because that’s the exact same flop Hogan would do in WCW when facing no-good giants and Yetis and etc.

With Ripper downed, Zeus keeps stomping on him, but out of the corner of his eye, Ripper sees young Randolph marshal his strength and… move his left hand’s little finger… just slightly, but that is enough. “Randy looks up at Ripper. Ripper is looking right at him. Ripper has seen. Ripper gets that look in his eye.” Ripper mounts a comeback for the ages and beats on Zeus, who flees from the resurgent champion of all that is good and decent. Zeus resorts to throwing people Ripper’s way as he stumbles up and somehow goes towards up to Brell’s control room, or rather the scaffolding from in front of it. Brell is bug eyed and angry, but wounded Zeus still is able to hold off Ripper until Ripper hits him with the bomber-move and Zeus falls off the scaffolding twenty feet in the air and lands in the middle of the ring that collapses and the impact rocks the entire building. Oh, and the crowd chants Ripper’s name. Because, yay, murder!

Brell is all alone in the control booth and going stark raving mad, destroying electronic equipment as Ripper (“his chest heaving”) goes after him. Brell backs up into an electronic panel and “his left hand reaches out and inadvertently grabs onto a sparking high-amperage electrical wire. His body shudders and convulses, his hand unable to let go.” The monitors explode (?) and the panel sparks some more as Brell is killed by voltage and “Ripper witnesses this with no remorse. Poetic justice.” A man killing himself with electricity is poetic justice for rape, assault, attempted murder and manslaughter? Okay, script, if you say so. In the studio, Ripper turns to face the crowd, who are on their feet and roar “in fanatic adulation and chant his name.” He just killed one man and caused the death of another. They are cheering two deaths of people they barely knew because the guy who killed them was a wrestling fella they were fond of. What is wrong with these people? What is wrong with this in-film universe?

Ripper returns from his murderous tour de force performance to mingle with the people, getting to Randy and Craig and Charlie and Sam. He hoists Randy on his shoulder and Randy now, and only now, little by little, with the cheers of the crowd gives the Ripper hand sign with his left hand as the film ends. Wowzers. It wasn’t Randy that inspired Ripper. Nope. Well, okay, I mean a little, with his finger and trying. Trying, not succeeding, by the way. He just tried. Then, it was actually Ripper by winning who inspired Randy to not be paralyzed any more. Wowzers. Hulk Hogan matches can cure paralysis, folks. It’s a fact. The script said so. Wowzers once more. The film saved its best Ripper magic for last.

No Holds Barred: The Script: The Discussion

Act I was awful, but entertaining. Act II is where things really went off the rails, but the first half of it wasn’t that horrific, as opposed to the second half which brought everything to a screeching halt and violated what little rules of this world that seemed to have existed. Act III was paint by numbers but a lot of paint was eaten before it could be applied. A lot was spent on the fight to make it look and sound interesting in the script, but in my recap with you I limned it because it wasn’t that creative or built up on anything. It wasn’t like Ripper went into the match with busted ribs and we saw Zeus focus on that the entire match. Neither was there a bum knee. Ripper is nigh invulnerable, and boring. We never felt he was in jeopardy because he was only getting beat on for ten minutes before being asked to take a dive. It was never clear if taking a dive would mean Zeus would kill him afterwards because Zeus does not care or even if Zeus knew of the arrangement Brell had (probably not, given how Brell wants to manipulate him). So the worst thing that could have happened to the character is that he would have lost, on TV. The horror!

Also, given the description of Ripper’s axe-bomber finisher, which is Hulk Hogan’s NJPW finisher but just slightly off (in the script, I mean, in the film it is a whole lot off), and that the script literally refers to Ripper’s 24 inch pythons when he is cradling the baby in the “Ripper is great with babies” scene, this was written specifically for Hogan even if you never heard the Florida hotel room story. This wasn’t a “well, Hell, let’s do a vanity project for some wrestling lunkhead or weightlifting fella,” this was done specifically for Hogan and per Hogan he rewrote it to best fit his needs. What kind of a blithering idiot thinks people want to see Hulk Hogan fix printers in a Hulk Hogan movie about Hulk Hogan being a wrestling champion? If you’re a kid, and you came to see Hulk Hogan fight you get two wrestling matches only: one to start the film and one to finish the film, ninety minutes apart. And in the middle, Hulk Hogan whomps on four mooks in a warehouse, makes a driver shit his pants and throws a rapist down into the sewer. Compare this to an El Santo or a Blue Demon movie and see just how off the mark the whole thing really looks and feels. Who is the intended audience for this film, as written? The script has no clue. It does its best to alienate Hogan fans by not having Hogan do the things Hogan does and doesn’t do anything to build a new audience, though it thinks it does by having Hogan be a lover and a knower of things. Let’s talk about that last part, because it really makes no sense, from any point of view but sheer and utter vanity.

The biggest problem with Ripper being a spotter of fake furniture, fluent in French and maker of French cuisine, IT expert and baby and babes handler is that none of it means anything and has zero bearing on the plot. Ripper wins the day through sheer brute strength, the same strength he had displayed in the first match in Act I in the first three five minutes on the film. Did Ripper overhear the nefarious plot to bring him down and was able to stymie it due to the plotter being French? Nope. Did he hack the WTN HQ computers and figure out how to shut down Brell? Nope. Did he make an amazing French dish which caused even the small heart of Orbach to grow and confess what Brell is plotting because great food conquers all? Nope. None of it mattered. The script wastes valuable pages to explore what Ripper does because it has no idea what to do with Ripper, and must just mark time until Zeus has been built up sufficiently enough of a threat to him. Act I establishes Brell wants to do Ripper in and cannot because his regular mooks fail. Act II is about Brell honing Zeus as his weapon to destroy Ripper. All well and good, but in the meantime Ripper does nothing relevant to the story or his character. Fixing IBM printers is not a character trait.

Ripper’s “arc” under the most generous of terms is having a brother be potentially paralyzed and gaining a lady love. But since he had women mooning after him all movie and it is implied gals dig him even before the start of the film, the lady love thing is not shattering. Even in Act III, when it seems Ripper is ready to throw the match just to ensure Sam’s safety not once do we feel that Ripper would not do that for say, oh a little kid that Brell kidnapped and threatened to harm. There is nothing special about Sam, as far as the story goes. Although, she has more of an arc than Ripper, as she learns to love. What does Ripper learn? That he can help his little brother overcome paralysis and sickness by murdering people? “What’s that, little brother? You got lupus? Hang on, I’ll beat up a 300 pound ‘roid monster to death before you and you’ll be right as rain.”

As previously stated, this is the vainest of all vanity projects. Now, let us see how the film improved on the script.

Spoiler alert: it totally didn’t.

No Holds Barred: The Casting

The extent of New Line Cinema contribution to the project is a bit murky, given the individuals involved and some rather nasty math which I will describe later, and it seems for all intents and purposes Vince McMahon took it into his head to do an independent movie and then distribute it. This meant that the traditional support structure was not there. It also meant, unless there was a strong veteran producer guiding the whole thing, the picture would either be in the hands of the director or some moneyed fool who was assembling the project. There were no veteran producers on the set. And the director picked was a TV movie man. Now, today, in the age of streaming prestige projects and the fact that there are no more mid-budget feature films in theaters any more (even before Covid), the world of feature film has become a barren wasteland of big blockbusters engineered for maximum audience quadrants and cheap horror films which make back their money because people need(ed) cheap scares and TV has lost a lot of its stigma. But, well into the aughts, there was a clear line of division between film and TV, and actors were warned against getting involved with the small screen. However, I don’t want to smear the director Thomas J. Wright with the brush of a hack, because he is actually a genuine success story. He started as an artist doing paintings that introduced each episode of Rod Sterling’s Night Gallery, and then transitioned to doing storyboards in the world of film where no less a luminary than Alfred Hitchcock liked the cut of jib so much he decided to sponsor him for membership into the Director’s Guild. Sadly, with such a pedigree he still did not get very far, and as we shall soon see this film did not light a fire under him either. For purposes of our tale so far, he is not a man with the power to rein in anyone on the set, leaving power squarely in the hands of Vince McMahon and Hogan. Scanning through the rest of the names present behind the camera one is struck by the underwhelming lot of them. No name jumps out. And that makes sense, because without major studio backing, the agents steering talent to the project would not exactly be lining them up to come, especially with the script we just read making the rounds. This leaves us with a lot of journeymen and never-will-bes, and also brings up a mystery: what was the proposed budget of the film? Variously, at different points of his life, Vince McMahon let it be known to his minions it was $20 million, $6 million or even $1.5 million. In his ghost written first autobiography Hogan stated it was $8 million. The real number is, as I stated prior, a mystery, but I will hazard some guesses based on what we will see and some of the rumors I had heard. Hulk Hogan’s paycheck is likewise a mystery, though a persistent rumor has it Vince McMahon paid him a million to do star in the flick. That number too would enter lore as well as the circumstances under which it was given, but I am getting ahead of myself again.

The question of where to film was settled early – Georgia. The tax credits were nice and the laws were lax, just like how Vince McMahon likes it. The fact that he was filming in the backyard of his long term wrestling enemy and new may have helped as well. With so many things settling into place the time was to cast the talent in front of the camera. For Brell, Kurt Fuller was chosen. The rest were then unknowns, except Sam. Sam was to be played by Joan Severance, a model turned actress, who was dipping her toe into the world of acting. In her terrible, horrible no good, very bad book, Linda Hogan (wife of the Hulk) would claim that Joan and Hulk had an affair on the set. Her evidence was that she was getting bad vibes from Joan when she visited the set and she noted that Joan was very pale. If you had read Linda’s book – and please don’t – you would know that Linda associates paleness with evil. No, I am not kidding. Linda associates tanning with healthiness and goodness, and if someone is pale, she does not much care for them. Don’t look at me like that. It’s in her stupid book. For Joan Severance, this would be her second feature film. I know IMDB lists several credits prior to “No Holds Barred,” but please recall IMDB lists projects by their release date, not their filming date. NHB was made prior to the rest of the ’88 and ’89 projects of Severance. Her only role prior to this film was a bit part in “Lethal Weapon,” when the then reigning and undisputed king of action flicks producer Joel Silver discovered her in a bar and gave her his card and told her she should be in the movies. Severance once gave an interview where when asked about her work experience, she answered, “babysitter, model, supermodel, then actress.” It’s a good line, but it also means in those Sam-Rip scenes, it is actually Hogan who is the veteran actor.

For the flashy and would-be memorable role of Neanderthal, the king of roughnecks at Spike’s bar, Hogan approached Stan Hansen, a fellow wrestler. Hansen and Hogan had worked together years and years, in various federations, including the old WWWF, and then in New Japan, where Hansen’s cowboy act got over with the audience. Hansen and Hogan teamed several times as well, and got along. At the time of the filming, Hansen was in AJPW. It is likely Hogan offered the position as a favor, because it would allow Hansen a chance to get health insurance via the Screen Actors’ Guild. Wrestlers were and are classified as independent contractors, remember? Hansen had always insisted on carrying health insurance, no matter the cost, since the early days of his career, to fix all sorts of injuries a wrestler may obtain in the course of his every day work. When he found out that the Guild would carry him on their insurance for up to three years if he did the feature film, Hansen was all-in. Rounding out the cast were his fellow wrestlers and WWF talent, who may or may not have been compensated for additional work on the film to supplement their WWF pay. Only one role remained to be filled – Zeus.

As casting began, McMahon and Hulk auditioned many. Well, so Hulk says. Then one actor stepped in. He was heavily muscled and had a shaved head. He had taken the trouble to use a marker to write Zs into the side of his head, and put electrical tape around his wrists to simulate wrist tape. Aware that Hulk Hogan was a shoot 6’5″ (though billed taller), the 6’4″ actor decided to wear lifts in his boots to appear larger than Hulk and therefore be more imposing as Zeus. A man who knew how to pump iron, the actor also made sure to do a 100 pushups in either the parking lot prior to going into the audition room and also slathered his chest with baby oil to let his muscles glisten. When he came in, he had one more card to play: he was born blind in one eye and the effect of on it has face gave him a striking look. He came in and hissed his lines and per the actor, Vince McMahon turned to Hogan and said, “That’s Zeus.” The actor’s name was Tommy “Tiny” Lister Jr. A loner by temperament with a hatred for male authority figures, Lister hated coaches and teammates alike. He also had an outsized homophobia, going so far as to speak about being revolted about touching men in any context. But with his powerful frame, sports were an easy outlet into higher education. He chose shotput and set records for his school. Middling through life he fell into acting. And he came in and took the role. A good tale, but also one that omits things. Such as Lister had an agent, and it was the same agent Hogan used. And it was said agent who sent Lister to the audition. It would be impossible for Hogan to not know of such things prior to Lister walking through the door. For his part, Lister also omits the detail. Upon seeing their new Zeus, who bulked up for the audition by getting to 285 pounds, Vince had only one ask: take three months to prepare for the role. Somehow Lister immediately what that meant, for when he showed up to shoot he was 305 pounds and all his gains were pure muscle.

Next up, we will dive into the film itself.

No Holds Barred: The Film: Act I

As in the script, the film makes sure the first image we see is that of our hero, but unlike the script there is now a voice-over of two announcers, bickering, and discussing how this is special when one Jake Bullet will challenge the World Wrestling Federation champion for the belt. The two announcers are easily identifiable as “Mean Gene” Okerlund and Jesse “The Body” Ventura, and we are already in a bit of a weird territory. In the script, the champion is not that of the WWF. Neither are the announcers identified. By introducing Ventura and Okerlund as themselves and setting the film in the universe where WWF exists we are confusing things. Rather than set in a fictional movie universe where WWF is wholly absent, we are now in an alternate universe where Hulk Hogan does not exist, but everything else associated with him does. Adding to the weird feel are the colors of the hero. Instead of Hogan’s red and yellow, Ripper is in blue and white. So… there is a Hulk but he is not Hulk, but he is played by Hulk but nearly everything else is the same. And all this in the first two minutes of the film.

As for the first shot of our hero, it is him, silhouetted by white light, shaking his face and something falling off his jowls. It looks like drool. And that is not a pleasant thing to first see when we meet our hero. It is actually meant to be water. For in the script, if you recall, there was an entire ritual of cross and hands intertwined, and we were left to infer this is what Ripper does before every big match. Including the scoop of water from basin into the face. Well, all of that is now gone, including the basin and the water in it and instead we just get Hulk Hogan appear to be slobbering. Not a great look.

One other twist in the film is that Ripper is no more. He is now simply Rip. And while IMDB indicates he is Rip Thomas, I can assure you that not once will anyone in the film mention his last name. He is just known by his first name, as he was in the March script, but now that name has been shortened. This makes for an easier chant of the crowd – “Rip” as opposed to the two syllable “Rip-per,” but otherwise seems a bit goofy. I guess it meant something to someone, perhaps Vince? But when Rip enters the arena he encourages a two syllable chant of “Rip ‘Em” thus nullifying the whole thing. Oh well.

Rip walks into the arena and fans react. The fans are excited to see Rip, and they are pressed to the guard rails of the narrow aisle of the arena a bit too closely than WWF would allow in real life. Hmm. Either this was filmed at a regular WWF wrestling show after wrestling matches and extras were told to crowd the aisle, or they are crowding because we are in a tiny arena and they are preventing us from seeing how small it really is. Right now I am favoring the second option, because there is some really weird spatial configuration with the fans’ placement. That kind of voodoo is more typically done to hide a small crowd.

Awkwardly dubbed lines alert us that Randy and Ripper are brothers and they have grown closer since the passing of their parents. Wait, what? Apparently someone read the script and decided that folks might want to know where Randy’s dad and mom are after he had been crippled and decided that they had to explain it. That one just reads like a weird note from a producer, where instead of focusing on how the entire film makes not a whole lot of sense they concentrate their brain power on trying to make sure everyone understands what happened to the one minor potential plot gap that no one cares about. Good job, film. You explained one of the questions I never bothered to ask.

The film cuts to Ventura and Okerlund at ringside (not really, but the insert of them imposed over a cheering crowd is not as awkward as it could have been), as both men do their best to build up the challenger to WWF Champion Rip – Jake Bullet, played by an embarrassed to be here Bill Eadie. Eadie was asked to come up with a new character to portray Jake Bullet and buy his own gear for it. He kept the Demolition black trunks and changed his appearance thusly: mascara and lots of it, feathering his hair up. Even with Ventura and Okerlund telling us how much of a great challenger he is to Rip, he does not appear to pose much of a threat to our hero. As Rip walks into the ring, he rips off his T-shirt, further confusing the Hogan-Rip dynamic in the heads of little kids everywhere. And as he does, I pause the film and spot all those empty seats. Ouch, that’s a big no-no in WWF world. These are not WWF cameramen then. Also, I count less than twenty rows from ringside to the top of the curtains here and the layout seems to be mid ’80s multi-purpose mid-major arena in the Midwest. Hmm. IMDB says this film was partially shot in Topeka, Kansas, and I think the Landon Arena would fit.

Suddenly the camera pulls back to take in the ring diagonally from ten rows back, and the lighting completely changes. There were painfully obviously two shoots done at different times and the footage was awkwardly spliced. These are simple things to do and hard to screw up. The technical failures of this film are present before the opening credits stopped rolling. Bullet and Rip wrestle a bit with Bullet suddenly gaining advantage and going for a pin early only for Rip to kick out. The crowd is meant to boo, but no one clued them in, or the sound did not travel well with only a few hundred extras in an arena seating 5,000, so they had sweeten the audio so it sounds like we get a chorus of boos. Rip’s trainer Charlie reacts to the champ nearly losing by raising his hands and covering his head and “acting” concerned, and it’s bad acting, and that is terrible. The actor playing Charlie is not being asked here to dig deep into the well of pain of his soul and react to a scene of horror, he has to act concerned his protégé is going to lose. That’s not a hard emotion to display. Not to be outdone, Rip’s brother Randy also acts as if he saw a burger on sale after he already ate one. The actor portraying Randy was 24 years young at the time of filming, but looks only slightly younger. If I had not read the script, I would have no idea he is supposed to be 18 here.

Cut to Brell watching the bout on TV in… well it doesn’t look like a conference room or a nerve center of anything. It looks like an executive lounge. There are no desks, only leather chairs cluttered in the middle of the small room, with three leather armchairs abutting the wall. As in the script, Brell thinks the competition might self-destruct here. In the ring, Bullet has locked in a sleeper hold and Okerlund assures us that Bullet is moments away from winning, a shot of Bullet having the hold on cinched tight is framed by empty seats. Man, did anyone not watch the dailies and say, “guys we need to have everyone on one side and then we can film everything facing one side.” This is some lazy work by the folks behind the lens. As Bullet applies the pressure, Randy shoots the left-handed “Rip ‘Em” sign at the fast fading Rip. Rip looks down at his own left hand does the “Rip ‘Em” sign to himself and breaks Bullet’s hold and turns the tide. The cheering people give him the Rip ‘Em sign, most of them doing it wrongly, and you notice bored kids in yellow T-shirts staring blankly ahead in the same shot. I am guessing those were the wrestling fans who showed up to see Hogan in their red and yellow Hulkamania T-shirts, but were told they had to turn their shirts inside out if they wanted to stay for the shoot. The rest of the extras were gifted black WrestleMania IV “What the world is watching” T-shirts, which fill the arena. Amusingly the man front and center among the fans and screaming the loudest for Rip is a big fella in a red “Shit Happens” trucker hat. Things you would never see on a WWF broadcast, ever. Man, I don’t mean to harp on this, but this movie so far is showing less diligence about camera work and who does what in front of it than a bottom of the barrel wrestling show on TV. Jake Bullet tries to attack Rip, but Rip is not feeling anything at the moment, energized as he is by the fans and he sends Bullet into the ropes and then catches him with a big boot, which is shown from four different angles (all of them showing different lighting, from the different shoots). Then Rip gets ready to hit Bullet with his in-movie finisher, but before he does, he shoots the “Rip ‘Em” sign to the crowd with his left hand… and his right. Whoa there, movie. What are you doing? Have we forsaken the “always left” thing? Does that mean the paralysis is now not going to be in the movie? Or are we coming up with a different sign. Also, it appears Bullet’s trunks are now dark blue. I can’t tell if it is due to lighting or if he wore two different outfits for two different (at least) shoots, but suspect it is lighting because Bill Eadie was a stickler for making things look professional. Rip hits Bullet with his bomber and pins him. Ventura says he can’t believe Rip did it again and talks about the place going crazy and pandemonium.

Back at Brell’s evil lounge, Brell repeats Ventura’s lines in anger and throws his remote at the corner plant. A pan back shows he was not in fact watching one TV but seven, with the wrestling bout on the main screen and four smaller ones flanking it on the right and two on the left. Hang on, the whole point of having different screens was that Brell could compare and monitor things on different networks. What is the point of showing the same thing on all seven monitors? Incensed, Brell throws his remote at a fichus plant and that causes all the monitors to turn to static. That seems weird, and that’s not how remotes work. Brell stands and glowers about the room of seated executives. Brell stalks the lounge, talking about being last in the ratings. Brell turns to face the executives and demands “I want that jock-ass on this network!” And thus the term “jock-ass” enters pro-wrestling lore. Who came up with it? I know not. But it is one of three or four things for which this film is known, and not seeing it in the March draft of the script confused me. Perhaps one day someone will find out who decided to use that bizarre term of abuse in the film. Was it perhaps meant to be a one-time line and said as two words “jock” and “ass” in reference to Rip being both an ass and a jock as far as Brell was concerned, and Kurt Fuller (chewing the scenery without even asking for any condiments) just said it as one word and all laughed and decided to roll with it? I fear I have not the answer. One person who read my treatment of this film flubbed the line “jackass” or perhaps it was in the script and was a typo and all had a great time? Once more, I have no good answers, only questions.

Brell wants his execs to come up with some answers and stalks off. In the ring, Howard Finkel announces the WWF champion Rip and Rip calls for Charlie and Randy to join him. Randy leaps into his arms and Rip catches him one armed, then sets him down and Randy shoots the crowd the “Rip ‘Em” sign… with both hands. Okay, so that concept is now truly dead. A shame. I rather liked how it was setup in the script. As Rip celebrates, Charlie holds up Rip’s belt and it is the Winged Eagle WWF world championship design which debuted in 1988. The original belt was on black leather and here it is on white. Charlie holds up the belt like a man who has never held a championship belt before in his entire life, letting straps fall and twisting the left plate up and to the side. Oh Charlie.

Cut to a TV truck driving up to a corporate glass tower, with the logo of the “World Television Network” on its side. Followed by a cut to inside the board room of Brell, who is ready to hear proposals of his executives. Whoa there, we lost the entire Randy wrestling in high school scene, and with it Randy’s harem and Rip having to teach young hothead Randy to calm down. And the scene will not pop-up elsewhere in the movie. It is simply gone. Did someone read the script and went, “perhaps teenage girls should not be uncrossing their legs in a Hulk Hogan movie?” If so, then that person gets a prize for trying to bring the film closer to Hogan’s core audience. However, lost with that scene is Randy showing off he can wrestle, which helps explain how he could dodge, duck, dip, drive and dodge away from Zeus until he couldn’t in their Act II confrontation. Hmm. Let’s see where this develops. Also, let us be on the lookout for Randy’s High School Sweethearts. There is a scene where Craig spots Zeus on TV and calls Randy over, and Randy is hanging out with his harem. If that scene exists in the movie, then the removal of Randy and the blonde with the uncrossing legs was done after it was already filmed. If the Sweethearts are gone completely, then it means the removal was done at script level and never filmed in the first place.

Brell talks about how he took over the network a few months ago and wants to take it to the top. That’s a different time period than one given in the script. Also, Brell once more calls Rip “jock-ass,” so Vince was all-in on that line. Brell talks about how each time Rip wrestles, his network loses ratings. He scans the executives, who avoid eye contact and settles on Ms. Tidings, who gives a martyred sigh. This scene captures toxic corporate management work environment to perfection. Everyone is so glad they did not get picked on, but at the same time dreads they might get called next. And the new script wins points further, by having Brell saying Tidings had survived his little purge and now he wants her to reward his faith in her. This is much smarter than anything I read in the March draft, and handles exposition better. No way had Hogan or McMahon written these lines. Tidings stands, braces and talks about a high-concept sitcom, and gets summarily dismissed by Brell. I see we have changed the Ted Turner “colorize black and white films” jibe to something more neutral.

Brell circles the board room and as executives literally duck their heads to avoid eye contact completely. Brell stops before one executive, who braces, but Brell turns around and points his finger at Ordway (changed from Orbach, because I can just see some producer having a moment and saying that would be a better name) and asks, “What about you, Ordway?” Ordway stands and drowning asks, not tells, “Could you see another prime-time game show? They sell?” Notable in this shot is the shirt of the character Ordway near his belt – it is bunched up, badly, because the actor filmed the scene of standing up to talk to Brell repeatedly in multiple takes and his shirt got wrinkled as a result and no one on set gave a shit, because they had more scenes to film. What we are seeing here and what we will continue to see is very illustrative of a TV vs. feature film ethos in 1988, and why those involved in films looked down upon TV production, from which most of the behind the camera folk responsible for this fine film came from. In a feature film, you do the scene until you get it right, so you set it up to be perfect, because you have time. In a TV production, you got two weeks, if that, to bang through 47 minutes of material (at most), and since folks will see it on a tiny screen of their TVs, just get rolling already, we got more episodes to put in the can. Once again, I am not calling the director a hack, but this is the kind of stuff that you wouldn’t see in a Stallone flick, even at his “Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot” nadir. Going into the production of the film, Vince took the reins, as he wanted to control Hogan and to also show folks he can make a film. Well, Vince knows nothing about film making. He may think he is making movies in WWF, but he’s not. Certainly not in 1988. And he does not understand the finer point of film production or the politics of Hollywood. He went in like a bull in a china shop and scared off major studios, saying he will front the money and then sell a finished product. So we have an independent film, with a first time producer, a novice director from the world of TV and Hogan, fresh off one bit part in a film prior and nothing else. The blind are leading the blind here. But let’s not make a mountain out of a wrinkled shirt. There is more goofy stuff later.

Brell mocks the “sell” line and flings open the poster on the table, it is that of Hulk Hogan, made up to look like Ripper, but it is 100% a Hogan poster. Brell demands his execs go out and get Ripper, and the scene plays out as it did in the March script. Brell breaks the geode and demands Rip be bought for him. Cut to Rip arriving at some cookie cutter corporate center in a limo. Because Rip is a nice fella, he thanks the limo driver for giving him a lift. Rip here rocks his business wear attire: a red and black spandex muscle T- with a red weight belt, black pants and a black doo rag, making poor WWF fans think they are in a Mirror Universe once more. It is that jarring.

The cookie cutter corporate center turns out to be WTN headquarters, as apparently Rip is already here to talk to Brell. We are making the pacing feel a bit snappier here so far so I am not complaining, just pointing out the differences from the script. In the script, we first meet Sam and then have a Brell-Rip meeting. Here the order is reversed. Brell is with Ordway and Unger (the latter as not yet named by the film) and he meets Rip and shakes his hand. When an excited Ordway goes to shake Rip’s hand next, Brell steps and puts his second hand on Rip’s arm to power shake once more, cutting off Ordway and waving him off. A disappointed Ordway slinks off, showing how much he wanted to meet the champ. That’s actually a neat little moment, and though played broad I enjoyed it. Also, that is not in the script, nor would it have been, so this is the director having a bit of fun and letting Kurt Fuller and “Ordway” Charles Levin have something to do on the set. As Brell kisses Rip’s ass, Hogan tilts his head to the side and raises an eyebrow to show he is above such foolishness. This is an old trick used by terrible actors to appear that they are acting. Before Chris Rock figured out how to act, he used to do it in his films all the time, usually followed by an attempt at a disarming smile.

Brell leads Rip to a priceless chair: “You like the chair? Crafted for men of great stature. Louis XIV. Cost me a fortune.” Ripper sits down in it and it creaks, and I eagerly wait for furniture expert Ripper to educate us it is a Louis XV and that it is a fake. And I wait. And wait. And am left waiting. It never comes. The whole idea of Rip being a furniture expert is excised from the film. Well now, did we dial down the vanity, or did Hulk Hogan think knowing furniture would make him appear less manly? Either way, Rip no longer recognizes fake antiques by a mere glance. A word about the room where Brell makes his pitch. The set design and decorations all speak to a Chinese motif, but the furniture is French, either showing Brell is a doof with no understanding of how things should flow and buys everything or this is actually someone’s office and they went with it, or the set decorator and the script supervisor were not on the same page, or nobody bothered to adjust the lines once they had the set. I lean to the latter two scenarios.

Speaking of scenarios, the rest of the scene plays out exactly as it did in the March draft, including Rip stuffing the check down Brell’s mouth. This actually caused a situation on the set, because Hogan not up on the whole “acting” thing, literally crumpled up the check and shoved it down Kurt Fuller’s mouth, causing him to choke and the director to yell “Cut.” A stunned Hogan was then told that he should not have done that, as this is the movie world and one does not literally shove something a man’s throat and cause him to choke. An apologetic Hogan talked to Fuller afterwards, who laughed the whole thing off.

As Rip walks off, he turns at Ordway, Unger and Brell and growls and does a “Rip ‘Em” sign. This brings up a motif that the script had for a bit and the movie really indulges, Hulk Hogan making animals sounds and growling and breathing hard. In the script, it happened three-four times. In the film, it is closer to four dozen. In fact, in certain parts of dialogue, Hogan will just start making noises to signal emotion. It is… curious.

Brell calls the garage and I glance at the clock. We are about 13 minutes in. The wrestling match ended five minutes into the film. That means we are setting up the confrontation with the four goons and the limo driver to happen at the 15 mark or so. This makes sense. In a popcorn flick, the rule is that you must have something action-oriented happen every ten minutes or your audience gets bored. A still annoyed Rip fumes in the backseat of the limo as a new and evil limo driver (mirrored shades) drives him off. They pass a sign that says Paces Ferry Rd SE and I think I know where they filmed the WTN headquarters – 2410 Paces Ferry Road. That pointless bit of trivia out of the way, Rip notices the limo going the wrong way, the limo driver ignores him and blocks off Rip and locks in the doors and seals off the partitions. Rip starts banging on the partitions and the sheer force of his blows make the limo swerve wildly. Uh, okay. So we lost the bit where Rip knows antique furniture, but he seemed to have gained more physical prowess and growls like an animal. I am not sure that is a good trade off from the dumb Act I read in the March draft, movie. Rip beats on the car from inside and this causes dents on the outside, because, ya know, Rip, and also because the poor limo now hits trash cans, buildings, other cars and yet keeps on ticking, as the evil limo driver keeps driving. Ripper keeps smacking the car some more and that makes the limo driver hit a security guard booth made entire out of particle board that collapses into jigsaw puzzles pieces of wood, because that’s exactly how physics work. The cars hit and threatened by the limo are all late ’70s Fords, but the evil limo itself is a stretched Caddy and is at least from the early ’80s, though it may be a custom job since the trunk is not really Caddy like and leans more towards a Lincoln.

The bouncing limo arrives at its final destination – the abandoned warehouse district, which exists in every movie town. There three thugs await. In the script there four. Each one wears different type of clothing that is very visually distinct: there is blazer fella, cheap leather jacket and what may or may not be a cardigan. The camera does quick cuts so we do not see what weapons they exactly have. As they surround the vehicle, Rip growls (oh movie) and looks about and spots the paneled roof of the limo. He then explodes out of it like the Incredible Hulk as really strange jaunty song starts to play on the soundtrack. Rip growls at the men some more and starts beating on them, one by one, as they patiently wait to get their turn. A minute into the fight I realize there were in fact four, the camera cuts just obscured him. The action is absolutely pedestrian and lazily shot. Part of the problem is that Rip is nigh invulnerable and we just saw him torpedo through the metal and glass roof of the limo with no ill effects. At one point in the fight, one of the goons smashes a pipe into Rip’s back and he falls belly first into a “grease stain” on the garage floor (literally hitting the mark designated for him to assist in the fight choreography) and he just sort emits a “whoa” the way you would after downing a soda drink that was not as fizzy as you expected, and pops right up. And when I say he gets hit by a pipe, I mean he gets walloped by a pipe the size of a Scottish Claymore, and it does nothing to slow him down. It is hard to have any feeling of jeopardy and the happy little song does not help. It means the fight is meant to be taken like a goofy little thing and we are meant to ooh and aah as it transpires, but nothing much transpires, so without the drama or the giddy fun, we are just marking time as Rip growls, “whoas” and hits people. At one point, one of the goons punches Rip right in the faces and Rip flares his nostrils, growls, bugs out his eyes and wails on him a bit. I am not entertained.

Then, chuckling to himself all the while, Rip stalks the driver, who is pinned down by the bodies Rip has thrown into the car. Rip drags the driver out of the car, while making faces and noises that are between Popeye the Sailor Man and Curly from the Three Stooges, while also growling. The driver makes yelping sounds and we cut to the seat of his pants which are stained brown and are leaking, not as if he has in fact crapped his pants, but as if he sat in a giant pan full of motor oil for three minutes and only then stood up. In the script, this scene was goofy, in the film this scene is memorably bizarre and became the film’s calling card. It is the one piece of dialogue all who have seen the film recall instantly even years later when discussing the film. I am of course talking about the one and the only “Dukey” scene.

Ripper growls some more and then flaring his nostrils does a “Fee-fie-foe-fum” look about, his eyes threatening to pop out of his sockets and demands to know what is that smell. The driver ekes out, “Dukey” and unlike the script, here Rip growls out, “Dukey?” in return and end scene.

In another glass tower that looks just like all others, some suit tells Rip that he is getting a new account executive – Sam. Rip, wearing the same black and red as he did in the limo scene meets Sam, who is get this – a girl! – and she is named Samantha N. Moore. Oh movie. Your love of stupid names is almost endearing. Rip gets completely tongue tied at the appearance of a hot girl and turns to the suits asks, “Sam?” to which they chuckle. Rip is having to deal with the fact that ladies can do business as well. Left unsaid is the implication that had the account exec been named Jessica, poor ole’ Rip would have been forewarned that he will be dealing with someone who in fact has breasts and learn how to brace himself for such a development. And awkward lighting has returned. When Joan Severance, the actress portraying Samantha N. Moore, stands stock still, the camera seems to capture her okay, about half the time, but when she moves about, the camera seems to have trouble capturing her in the same fashion as when she stood still. As Sam tells all to be seated and talks marketing, all read the brief she prepared except Rip, who stares after her and exhales softly. Now, in Rip’s defense, Joan Severance is very, very, very attractive woman, and is a former supermodel. But still, Rip is acting like an eight year old boy who just realized he likes the way Suzy two desks over looks like, only somehow he is less mature about it. As Sam walks about and the lighting stays flat and TV like, Rip continues to check her out and actually at one point looks her up and down and nods to himself. Oh Rip. Also, having cut out the scene of Rip meeting Liz the lovelorn receptionist, we have not established that ladies did Rip. Now, in the March draft of the script, the progression was: first we establish Rip is in fact a sex symbol and the object of unrequited lust from at least some of the women who meet him, and then we establish Rip also has feelings for girls. Here, without Liz, Rip is just a horny fella who is smitten at the first attractive woman the film introduces. This undermines Rip as a character. Instead of showing him as immune to affections of some ladies and noticing only Sam, to show how even Sam can make Rip sweat, we see Rip fall apart right away. The script built up Rip as something more than just a fighter, and went overboard with it. The film is intent on making Rip a superhuman brawler, but seems to be dialing down all the other crazy delicious touches that I hate-loved in the script. Back to horny Rip staring creepily at Sam.

As Sam talks about how much she wants to change and do with Rip’s character and business interests, she cottons on that Rip is staring (she’d have to be blind not to notice that) and calls him out what he thinks of her proposal thinking he has ignored all of it, and he kinda has, because his redirect is to merely point out that he likes charity and that is his chief outside interest, so her proposal needs to include that. This leads to a cut away to the nameless suits nodding their heads sagely and Sam being defensive, but not as defensive as she gets when Rip says he does not mean to be rude but he has somewhere he needs to be and can they discuss this later. Switching to offense, Sam tells him she will pick him up at eight, for dinner. At this point, Rip’s jaw wobbles to sell shock. Oh man, this is bad acting. Mouth still open, Rip is told the place will be “dressy” as Sam cracks the whip and takes charge.

Let’s call it an Act I here, though it really isn’t.

Given the clothes, the reference by Rip to having a meeting, and the March draft, it is clear that the Sam-Rip meeting scene was meant to take place before the Brell meeting. But someone decided the cutaway from a man shitting his pants in fear of Hogan to a French restaurant with Rip and Sam having a date might be better served by instead having Sam set a date with Rip and then cutting to that date, and moving up the pants shitting up one sequence. The pacing is slightly better as a result, and I did point out when reviewing the script just how odd the cutaway from Dukey to French cuisine, so let’s call it a win. Overall, however, the film is still awkward, as the gains are mostly offset by the new set of losses. I liked that it was not Ripper suggesting he and Sam talk about this after hours in a casual place, but instead Sam was the aggressor – because A) her motivation is ostensibly to teach this lunkhead the finer points of her marketing plan, and B) if Sam is still a mole for Brell, then of course she would take charge and try to get Rip to be closer to her quickly so as to learn things from him to sell back to Brell. As noted earlier, I also think the elimination of a high school girl uncrossing her legs was an improvement, though at the cost of removing a scene showing us Randy can wrestle. But the limo scene was somehow worse on film than in print, and went on far longer, including the pants shitting being extended. Rip’s animal growling and weird noises help no one, and I really cannot emphasize enough how much of a weird feel it would have been for Hogan fans to see the Mirror Universe where Rip is almost Hogan. The film cannot decide the difference between Hogan and Rip besides saddling him with a trainer and a brother, making the existence of Rip as a character separate from Hogan largely pointless. In the script, Rip was Hogan with the serial numbers filed off. In the film, Rip is Hogan with the serial numbers still visible. Still, we’re early on in the film and we setup some stuff that could be fun to resolve.

No Holds Barred: The Film: Act II

We see a large stained glass window of Christ and a woman playing a harp below it in evening wear. Erm, okay. She sits behind a balustrade a floor above an open hall filled with tables full of people eating indoors, and none are six feet apart. To quote one of the Four Yorkshiremen: “Luxury!” Everyone is attired in good ’80s evening wear, with men in solid black suits and ladies in more evening gowns ranging from blue to light brown, when in comes Sam and Rip. Sam wears a black gown, her hair perfectly coiffed by late ’80s standards, and ole’ Rip rocking a white sports jacket with matching pants, vest, and a shirt, unbuttoned to just about his navel and no tie. He also sports no doo rag, allowing his fine silky blonde hair (or what little of it remains) frame his face and head. People stare. The snooty waiter lovingly places the menu into the hands of Sam, shoot a “Sacre bleu” look to Rip and tosses the menu in his direction. Imagine Mr. Bean playing a snooty French waiter, after receiving a massive head injury and medicating himself with bottom shelf vodka, and you will picture the waiter.

Sam says she hopes Rip will find something on the menu he will like, as the waiter regales her with the choices. The young fella who pours ice water spots Rip, smiles broadly and goes towards him as the waiter waxes poetic about the special of the day. Seeing the smiling young fella standing there with a bucket of ice water, the waiter makes a disgusted face and makes hissing sounds and waves his hand at him to disappear, the young man departs, smiling all the while at Rip, who is not pleased by this display. And we now know that Rip must hand this waiter his comeuppance. Then, because we are all stupid and need to really sell the waiter is an ass, he keeps talking to Sam in French as Rip shakes his head. The waiter stops and condescendingly explains what quiche is to Rip and then Sam starts to guess what Rip would like, since he is not the quiche type to her. Okay, now I want Sam to get her comeuppance. Rip keeps shaking his head. I suppose this is a good time as any to talk about Hulk Hogan’s acting – it’s bad.

Pro-wrestling is foremost live theater, but here, divorced from the instant feedback of a live crowd, before the unforgiving harsh glare of overhead lights and an even less forgiving camera, with no audience save a director and the people clustering behind the camera to wait for the scene to be done, Hogan is exposed. He is not a classically trained thespian. He is not someone who has had a lot of film acting experience. He is at the mercy of the script, the director and his co-star. The script is, as we have seen, garbage. The director is a novice. And his co-stars are rookies. It’s a bit of a mess.

The Snooty French Waiter tells Rip that he will not find a hamburger on the menu, which is a reversal of the script, where the Waiter said perhaps Ripper would prefer it. Rip stares down the Waiter, while in the back we see the Ice Water Boy bring out an excited French Chef, who has the kitchen staff with him. The Chef tells Antoinne (the Waiter) that he should have told him that Monsieur Rip was here, and then apologizes to Rip for Antoinne, saying he is new. Antoinne does a terrible attempt at a slow burn, snaps back the ends of his bow-tie (what?), pulls a face and departs. Huh? The Chef, his hat off, for one does not wear a hat in the presence of a king, addresses Rip and asks him if he wants the usual, to which Rip responds in two sentences, in French. Notable, the first and a half sentences are stated off camera with only the Chef’s face in the frame. I wonder how many takes they took with Hogan, before they just told him he could dub it later and asked him to hit the one part he could hit in the prior takes. The Chef snaps his fingers and departs, and Rip shoots Sam a look. End scene.

The Hell was that? The scene of Rip being a French chef has been cut and I won’t miss it, but what we have is not an improvement, except the crazy was dialed down. Someone made the call that only Rip should not be an antique furniture expert, but also not a French chef. Given Hogan’s ego, I wonder who told him to dial it down a notch. Also, the French waiter is still French in the film, as opposed to be being exposed as a fake Frenchman in the script. And his comeuppance is him being told off by the Chef and him rolling his eyes and walking off? Come on. In the script, the snooty waiter is utterly embarrassed and then has to follow Rip as Rip wheels in the four meal course. Here he makes a face and goes off.

Smash cut to two men headbutting each other in the ring in Spike’s Bar. Ah, okay, so that’s why the script called them Headbangers. Now it makes sense. We pan back to take in the bar, and it is a dive bar, as understood by middle class suburbanites in ’88: everyone is white, has tattoos, wears denim and country western music plays in the jukebox, as beer is handed out. The ring itself is in the middle of the bar and is roped off, with barn posts covered in tires acting as turnbuckles. Brell takes Ordway and Unger down a staircase to the bar, which is now a basement dive and it appears Ordway is nauseous, while Brell says, “My sources tell me this could be the start of something big. And I like big ideas.” They pass two men in denim vests and no shirts, who mock bid them a good evening and tell them they are lost. The trio take in the bar, Unger and Ordway in disgust and Brell looking about in the way Il Duce must have taken in a meeting of blackshirts before the March on Rome and Unger asks a passing waitress (dressed like Skid Row Madonna) to be seated. Skid Row Madonna snorts in like she prepared to hock a loogie, then asks if they are cops. When all assure her they are not, she tells that the gay bar is across the street. Them’s the jokes, folks.

Brell meanwhile is still entranced, seeing the future. As Skid Row Madonna once again snorts (is she just disgusting or has taken a hit of some really bad cocaine?), Brell looks down at her as if only now aware of her existence, Skid Row Madonna tells them to come and tells them she will get them ringside to “let the headbangers fix your ass.” Ordway’s flabber is utterly gasted by the whole experience. The two Headbangers bite, claw and wail on each other, as a signs in the back assures us that “Genesee is on Tap.” Genesee, now there is a name I have not heard in a while. It is a Rochester based beer-company, and was and is big on the East Coast. But I am a West Coast lad, so I only became aware of it through brief excursions to the other coast. Also, notably, in the script there was a Raunchy Waitress who told them off and then another waitress sat them. In the film, the two roles are combined and that make sense from production perspective. Usually, in a film, someone sits down with the script and goes over speaking parts and makes notes about which lines perhaps can be given to another, because the pay scale is different for speaking vs. non-speaking roles.

The waitress asks them what they would like, and Ordway asks for a Scotch on the rocks and Unger a dry martini. The waitress rejoins: “I’d like to get laid, relayed and parlayed, but that ain’t gonna happen here. So what’s it gonna be…?” To which Brell replies, “Just three beers, okay?” The waitress snorts and stalks off. “Laid, relayed and parlayed” is an ancient slang line and it means what you think it does, but how did it find its way into this movie, which is not brimming with memorable dialogue? Well, in the Spring of ’87, when the Jessica Hahn scandal broke wide open in the biggest papers in the nation, Washington Post interviewed Hahn’s New York lawyer Stanley Siegel about the sordid situation, and he said of Jessica Hahn, “She was laid, relayed and parlayed.” Knowing a good line when they see it, the hacks in papers across the United States repeated it when aping the Washington Post story. And because folks on the West Coast did not have access to East Coast papers (or beer) without really trying in ’87 or ’88, the story and the line took about a year to travel across the United States, each time the Hahn scandal got a fresh injection of news worthiness and the local hack had to come up with something to spice up the morning paper read of Mr. and Mrs. America. Thus, the hacks who wrote this script, be it McMahon, Hogan or the man who got the WGA credit, the line was fresh in their minds and they snuck in… into a film made for little kids who comprised the core fanbase of Hulk Hogan. Ta-da!

In the ring, the bald headed and bearded man wins. He is portrayed by Jos LeDuc. LeDuc actually got a gig in the WWF right before the filming of the movie, doing a couple of matches with his gimmick being “Headbanger” in a weird bit of synergy. But it did not work out. Given the tangled tales of finances of this film, I wonder if LeDuc was given some matches as payoff for doing the picture. Naturally the violence in the makeshift ring sickens Unger and Ordway, while Brell is all-in. Ordway looks about in confusion at the mayhem and spots a chaw chewing Neanderthal from the script, and asks him about the refs, and the lines from as in the script follow. The Neanderthal, as noted earlier, is portrayed by Stan “The Man” Hansen, who is also called “Bubba” by the script and his Skid Row Madonna sister.

When Brell finds out about the lack of rules in the fight, he enthuses “Those are my kind of rules.” Meanwhile the fight awkwardly spills out outside. All right, it seems the director really enjoyed working with Brell and his minions and there is a lot of little moments thrown and freedom of action to do things not written in the script. But the director doesn’t really know how to shoot a fight scene, which is a bit of a problem in a movie where the whole point are the “no holds barred” fights. Shooting action scenes is very much a specialized skill and shooting fight scenes a subset of it. Even great directors or those with great reputations have at times found it hard to do a simple brawl and I have seen plenty of European war films where the film falls apart precisely as the fighting is filmed, because the director knows not how to shoot it. So now we have a star who cannot act, a co-star who is in her second movie, a bad script and a rookie director who doesn’t know how to frame fight sequences in a fight film. Bumpy ride.

Brell pays the waitress 100 bucks and tell her Neanderthal/Bubba can keep the change if he beats the man who just won the hard fought bout against the headbanger. Bubba charges in and the scene is ineptly and awkwardly shot. As in the script, Brell watches on in delight as Ordway and Unger are sickened. Meanwhile Bubba celebrates by calling for a keg. It is thrown, he catches it and then uses his thumb to poke a hole in it and sloshes it over his face and open gullet in celebration, while a little person in a cage above the ringside seats throws peanut shells into the beer glass of Unger, as Brell sells his vision of taking this to the cable TV to his horrified minions. The two minions stagger off to find a bathroom to pee. Unger, the bolder of the two, decides he will ask the locals where the bathroom is in their lingo and approaches a fat man in overalls (and no shirt) and asks him “where to bleed the old lizard,” to which the fat fella replies, “In your pants, wimp.” Mortified, Ordway drags off Unger and upbraids him for his choice of language. It is clear the director liked working with actual actors and was trying to give them more lines and do more scenes with them. Unger and Ordway stagger to the end of the bar, driven by instinct and find a disgusting bathroom with a side door that is labeled “V.D. Room.” The things one sees in a Hulk Hogan kids movie, eh? The bathroom contains a chained dog (why?) and overflowing urinal troughs that appear to have generated brown algae and pools of vomit. I am smiling, because while not as bad, this reminded me of the old bathrooms with horrific troughs in the Dodgers’ Stadium in Los Angeles. Also, the budget cannot be that small, because I have seen too many scenes featuring too many extras in the shot at all times, and while some sets are simple redress of an existing location, others are clearly created solely for the movie and decorated with much time and effort spent on them. Take this bathroom set, with the chained dog, custom graffiti, the toilets and etc. And there are tell-tale signs of fake walls and partitions that are lavishly decorated as well. Care and money was put into this film, just not a whole lot of thought.

Coming up, a scene not in the script, but which was written by the same person(s) who wrote the March draft. As Unger and Ordway discuss the horrific bar, disgusting waitresses and idiots galore at the urinals, they hear a disgusting sound of defecation behind them. A flush sounds, and the door of the stall is ripped open with Bubba emerging, offended at being called an idiot. He grabs Ordway and contemplates dunking him in the urinal, but stops upon seeing the man’s exposed penis (thankfully off camera) and notes, “What have we got here? A teeny wanger!” He then turns to Unger and is delighted to find another there as well, and chuckling to himself stalks off. By now, you may have realized the film is delighted with defecation and bodily fluids. Both of these things are obsessions of Vince McMahon. As to how do I know this scene as filmed was written by the same man who wrote the March draft? In the March draft, there is a reference to Unger and Ordway talking things over while holding their “wangers.” So the same hand penned both the March draft and the shooting script as filmed.

As in the March draft, Ordway does not see the show ever getting in the air, and Brell announces it in front of his HQ, as various tough guys listen and watch on TV and the radio. But the name of the show has been tweaked: “The Battle of the Tough Guys,” which is way less of a mouthful. Also, Spike’s Bar has had a name change as well, now called “No Count Bar,” but it is still downtown, and humorously, not all character names have been updated, for as per IMDB, some are still called Spike’s Bar something or other. And, there is no intro scene of Zeus in prison or the warden giving him his parole papers. We have cut some of the more effective build up scenes of Zeus, and I don’t think of it as a plus. When Brell and his minions arrive, the bar is still decorated and has a marquee and spotlights. Inside, a tweak, we now meet the would-be fighters and actually hear them be named. In the script, only the men who would fight Zeus after he had won would have the honor of having their names be mentioned. Thus, we actually do meet Brock Chisler, who is a biker with an eye-patch; Bulldog McPherson, who is a crazy man as understood by wrestling parlance of the day – he mutters to himself and smacks his head, while smiling; Klondike Kramer, who uses deodorant; and our Bubba, who greets them as “teeny wangers” and laughs, along with Skid Row Madonna who has brown teeth and counts the cash from all the new patrons. Also, in the script it is not clear how many fighters joined, but in the film it so far looks like we only have four: Bubba, Brock, Klondike and Bulldog. Huh? I mean, $100,000 is on the line, in 1988. Surely there should have been a pair of mall dojo princes who would have gladly donned their gi and set out to prove to the world their ability to break boards would totally get them to victory, along with some bar fighters that at this time knocked out people for $100 as the prize for winning the whole tourney, never mind $100k. I have read memoirs of MMA pioneers and they talked of going town to town and fighting in bars far worse than the one shown in the film to earn $500, and doing fights out in the gravel surrounded by bikers. And these are the legitimate tales, by the way. Lots of wannabe-tough-guys talked of have bare knuckle brawls all over Europe and America in underground clubs that only existed in terrible ’80s movies. My point here – for that large a stake, we surely could have gotten more people than the All Valley Karate Tourney, just saying.

A bad montage of bad fighting continues and drags, badly, and we follow the script. Then Zeus arrives. In the script he showed up through the door, backlit by the lights from the outside. In the film, he storms through a wall he knocks down (I think). The lighting is not sourced, and we have no idea why is so dramatically backlit, other than it’s a movie so it must be dramatic. Zeus moves slowly, because the actor is wearing ridiculous lifts that make walking hard, but make him appear taller.

A female P.A. approaches Zeus as in the script, but he grabs her face in a claw like vise and jerks her up thanks to the wires holding her up off camera and then drops her straight down into an empty barrel (what?). People ooh and aah this, but they have just watched four men gouge, bite, claw and punch each other in the groin for half an hour. I suppose the man-on-woman violence is much different, but the reaction here is a bit strange, given the locale, the customers and the atmosphere. Also, I cannot overstate how awkward Zeus moves due to wearing lifts. We immediately cut to Zeus’s face and even though the actor was born blind in one eye and had a striking look already with a shaved head, someone made the decision for him to have a unibrow as well. We then cut to Brell’s eyes and all of this is meant to show a fellow predator recognizing another of his kind. Then the camera pans to Zeus again and pans back to show his entire sweaty face. He is wearing the remains of his prisoner uniform with the sleeves torn off. And it is annoying how the slow build up to the reveal of Zeus in the script is just curtailed to one big shot of him entering the bar. In the script there was tension and you wanted to see more of this monster. In the film, the time between him entering and us seeing his face is thirty seconds if that. In the script, the monster reveal was slow and methodical and done by someone who understood how monster movies work. In the film, it is rushed and just thrown out there, and it does nobody any favors.

Zeus walks slowly to the ring, due to those lifts, and the Ref glances at Brell, who is one of the few men still standing, as the rest sat upon Zeus approaching, cowed by his physical presence. Brell stares at Zeus and intones, “Let him fight,” as in the script. Zeus gets in the ring and slowly lumbers forward, trying to steady himself on his lifts. Zeus does not so much fights as lets other fight him, not reacting as they beat on him with their fists and clubbing forearms as he yells and tosses them about. Due to the lifts, Zeus cannot fight and move at the same time, and thus the only time he can actually clobber his opponents is in shots where he is standing still.

Cut to Rip’s house, where we see a TV tuned into the fight and on an entertainment center filled with the trophies Rip or Randy or both won. Intermixed with the trophies are photographs of Randy and Hulk Hogan, and I do mean Hulk Hogan, not Rip or Ripper, because they are all of Hulk Hogan in his yellow trunks winning matches, getting belts and ripping his shirt off. The man watching TV is Craig, and seated on the couch are Craig, Randy and a nameless leggy young woman of indeterminate age. Charlie and Rip watch on. “Who is he, Craig?” asks Randy. “I don’t know, man,” answer Craig, “This is that Battle of the Tough Guys competition they’ve been talking about.” Okay, so it seems we are down to one high school sweetheart, not a full on harem, but the presence of at least one girl on that couch now leads me believe there was a scene shot of Randy wrestling at the meet and being distracted by the gal. It’s perhaps not as blatantly sexual as in the script, but a variation of it surely existed, only to be cut for time or content before the film was released. As Randy and Craig debate whether Rip could take on unnamed Zeus or not, Rip just watches on and Charlie wordlessly sits down in an ugly armchair. Charlie is supposed to be acting like he has PTSD, but thus far shown mild annoyance.

In the bar, Zeus continues his terrible fighting routine, knocking out competition. Even by ’80s standards, this is some bad action and although Zeus is ripped to the gills and has the guns, he is too muscled locked to do anything and is too unskilled to actually fight. Bubba goes into the ring to fight Zeus, and we note his hair is in a bit of a disarray. Spoiler alert, later on in the scene Zeus rips his hair out, but once again, since this took multiple takes, they didn’t bother to arrange the hair right every take, thus sloppiness passed off as Bubba just being in disarray, even though sloppy and messy hair is actually Klondike’s character trait, not Bubba’s. In a small neat moment, Ordway, who has been disgusted by violence all night actually beams and leans in with delight when he sees Bubba charge Zeus in anticipation of the wrecking machine destroying the man who besmirched the size of his genitalia, repeatedly, and terrorized him. Way to go, Ordway. You get your revenge by proxy, fella.

Back to Rip’s house, Craig, who is dressed like he is auditioning for Miami Vice but bought his clothes two sizes too large, looks on disbelief, as Randy looks out into, uh, nothingness, and his High School Gal watches with blank confusion. Upon further review she is not in any way shape or form 18, and has not been 18 for some time when the film was made. Rip says, “Isn’t that…?” And Charlie chimes, “I never thought they’d let him out.” Craig is stunned to learn they know this man, as am I. Someone decided Rip could not be kept in the dark and had to have known whom Charlie trained before him, which is an odd choice, because it is actually much more effective to have Rip know nothing about this brutal man and to learn of him as he destroys people. In the script, Rip is a bit taken aback by the violence on the display and we realize these two men must collide as Rip still thinks. Here, in the film, Rip casually says, “Isn’t that…?” as if he just saw a fella he knew in school who once puked at his birthday party. There is no horror or shock, or even wariness. Just casualness.

Charlie is just terrible here, and delivers his line like he has a free pizza waiting for him if he finishes his lines early. I have seen industrial training videos with better acting. Craig is almost as equally bad, and Randy’s Girlfriend just stares vacantly. In fact, the best acting here is done by Randy, who is sickened by the violence and tries to figure it all out. For his part, Rip turns to look in, uh, something at Charlie when Charlie admits to once being Zeus’s trainer. It surely could not have been surprise, for Rip already knows who Zeus is, and must have known his history as well. So what is that look? I couldn’t tell you. It is clear the director is in over his head with novice actors. Brell and Ordway scenes he can do, because both are veteran character actors, who may not be good, but at least know their craft. Throw a bunch of rookies and one terrible old(er) actor, and the director just falls apart. Could no one yell, “Cut” and explained to the man halfheartedly portraying Charlie that when he discusses Zeus he is talking about a ruthless killer over whom he lost control – a mad, bad, dangerous man he actually helped train to become even more dangerous. A tinge of regret. Horror. Something! Instead, good old Charlie just talks about Zeus with all the emotion of a robot. Thus far, 37 minutes into the film, the worst acting prize goes to Charlie. Take a bow, Bill Henderson. I do not mean to speak ill of the dead, but it takes special skill to stand next to Hogan, and still come off as worse in comparison.

In the ring, Zeus beats on Bubba with shitty Mongolian Chops. Hmm, I wonder if Bill Eadie showed him how to do those on the set, or if someone else did. As Zeus beats on Bubba, he makes sure to drag his body over to right before Brell. Unger is agog in shock, and even Ordway is back to being disgusted, while Brell looks on dead-eyed at Zeus as Zeus then reaches down and rips out Bubba’s hair and holds it out like tribute to Brell, screaming incoherently all the while. Brell smirks, and Zeus stands and holds up the tuft of hair to each side of the eight sided ring, still screaming. Kurt Fuller, the man who portrayed Brell, admits to not being a good actor when doing this film, but thus far he is a good second to the man portraying Ordway. And speaking of my favorite “No Holds Barred” character, as soon as terrifying Zeus turns his back to the table where Brell, Ordway and Unger sit and shows off the hair to others, Ordway steals a glance at the prone body of Bubba and shoots a small grin. Zeus may terrify Ordway, but when he doesn’t have to look at him, he can still enjoy the defeat of Bubba. Little things like that separate good actors from bad. Somewhere there exists an alternate universe where Charles Levin, the man who portrayed Ordway, is the no-nonsense trainer of Rip and he has an amazing scene with Rip about how he could never forgive himself for training Zeus.

Brell enters the ring, to the shock and horror of Ordway and Unger, who are worried for the safety of their meal ticket, but Brell is unafraid and steps up next to Zeus, grabs the mic and announces the winner of the challenge, then realizes he knows not the name of the fella and covering the mic with his cupped hand goes, “What is your name?” Zeus yanks the mic out of Brell’s hand, which does not make Brell afraid or displease him, and hisses “Zeus.” Brell’s face breaks into barely restrained utter joy, and he manages to eke out, “Love it.” Man, Kurt Fuller is really having fun here. Meanwhile, the guy playing Charlie just wanted to get off the set and collect his paycheck. I know I keep harping, but I have read the script, so I know what it says on the page and now I can evaluate what the actors do with it. Brell has good lines, but builds on it. Ordway has little to no lines, but does more with it. Charlie has decent lines and fails to show up and do even the bare minimum.

As we end on Rip staring into the TV, cut to executives holding up identical newspapers of the fictional Midwest Gazette, in the Sports section of which is a pic under a headline of: “Ex-Con Zeus: Thriller or Killer.” The writer of the article is one Tom Hoffarth, and he actually happens to be a real life person and sports writer in the greater Los Angeles area, who wrote for the “Los Angeles Times” and the “Los Angeles Daily News.” We pan across the papers read by the execs, and Brell walks in and announces the overnights are in and they won their timeslot, but the line about the actual ratings and the share are now excised. I smell the hand of Vince McMahon, who would not want Brell to get better ratings than anything his Saturday Night network and cable TV specials obtained. Unlike in the script, where two different men confronted him in the board room. In the film, only one man merely points out that there is a P.R. problem brewing over the bad telegrams they got about the violence they have shown. Brell dismisses it with a “they watched, didn’t they?” Thus there is no grand standing here by any executives, not even One Jr. Exec, who had his lines cut in the rewrite. And that makes sense. Recall, the film already told us Brell has purged the exec staff since taking over, and only loyalists remain and even those he terrorizes. No one is going to stand up to him or tell him he is wrong. And even the person who brings up the telegrams does not oppose, so much as warns of an impending issue with publicity. Brell is too triumphant to even belittle the man who brings him this bit of bad news. “All it does is keep us in the headlines,” he counters.

Next up, we are live on location, in a factory that produces sparks and features grimy people. Whoa there, we lost the icehouse. In the March draft, there was an icehouse fight where Zeus beat upon some fella in filthy longjohns, if you recall, and then he beat up some fella in a factory that produces sparks. Hmm. If we feature two different fights at two factories that produce sparks, then we got a bit of a problem, because in film, variety is the spice of life, and re-using sets is a bit of a novice move. Let’s be on the lookout for what the film does with the sets. In the film, the announcer tells us that we are seeing Battle of the Tough Guys Week Two, and that Lugwrench Perkins is ready to fight Zeus. Perkins is grimier and tougher and whiter than the rest, and sports a beard and muscles. Zeus appears in a chain mail sleeveless T-shirt, jeans and a pair of Wonder Woman gauntlets on his wrists. He also can barely walk, due to the lifts. However, when Perkins and Zeus fight, I notice Zeus can move a lot better than at the bar, so he is not wearing lifts this time around as Perkins is shorter than him. Zeus destroys Perkins with his Mongolian chops, and yells some more to the camera, clanking his gauntlets together.

In a limo parked outside Rip manor, Sam talks on the car phone with a mystery caller about how she will take care of things since she will have time now that they are doing an “overnight.” Hmm, we seem to have lost the IT scene, lads. So Rip is no longer a computer expert, I am guessing. Also, the director of photography should have been punished for what he is doing to Joan Severance here. I have seen commercials and terrible other films where she looks much more attractive than she does here. The lighting and the awkward framing are really doing her a disservice. It’s one thing to screw up filming a fight, because it is a skill, but when you can make a supermodel look meh, pal, you need to look into another line of work. This is what happens when you go outside the studio system in the late ’80s and try to put on a show on your own and don’t know what you’re doing. Speaking of incompetence, here comes Hulk Hogan, who is dressed in in Rip’s signature blue outfit, a variant of the red and black spandex he wore to the meetings and fight. Rip is here to say hello to Sam and to introduce his brother Randy and somehow Hulk makes that line awkward. Wait, how is that possible? He literally just introduces someone to someone. He does this every day of his life! Acting really seems to be hard, folks.

We cut to a small private plane roll down the runway. I almost made a faux-pas and called it a Cessna, until I saw the proud lettering of its great Wichita, Kansas crosstown rival Beechcraft on the tail. Sam’s voice over explains the itinerary: “Our schedule is gonna be pretty tight. My office is taking care of all the details. Transportation, tomorrow’s fan club meeting and autograph sessions, hotel rooms…” Rip interjects hoping she didn’t make dinner reservations for he knows just the spot. Hang on, are we skipping the IT scene and the Ripper is great with babies scene? Well, that’s interesting. You are making Rip seem even more boring than in the March draft, and that by the way is a real problem that was experienced when the movie laid an egg at the box office. Theater managers reported that the film did its best in the inner cities, where the little kids cheered for Zeus over Rip when the two locked up. While I would take that with a grain of salt, I can see how neutral observers might want to get on the Zeus bandwagon, as he kicks ass, while Rip beat up one fella with mascara and feathered hair and four doofs, while Zeus is out there every week taking out the toughest fighters. Also, my Spidey sense is tingling, due to the dubbing by Sam and Rip about all this. Did the test audience and distributors really hate the entire IT and Rip with the baby scenes that much as to demand them being cut? Or did someone think it would improve the pacing? I must be the only person alive who wants a director’s extended cut of “No Holds Barred.” I wonder if the footage does exist or if it was soaked in gasoline and set on fire.

Cut to Sadie’s diner, where Sadie regales Sam of how she and Rip go way back. Sadie as portrayed in the film is a lot less raunchy than in the script, despite the dialogue being the same. Either the director told her to be more wholesome, or the actress decided she was in a kid’s movie and toned it down. Also, Joan Severance has one fun moment in the film when as Sadie PG-hits on Rip, Sam looks at her fork in discomfort and when Rip and Sadie yak, she glances up, sees they are not looking in her direction and grabs a napkin and cleans her fork, the look of discomfort growing into distaste as she does it. It’s the little things that I take away from this movie when it is done right. Also, while the place is not great looking, it is far from a dive and appears to be more rural than “bad part of town,” so that decision was nixed as well in the film. Sadly what is not nixed is Hogan’s acting. He somehow seems to get worse by the scene. The scene is a woman hitting on him. One would think that is something to which Hogan, a man who had rats, could pull off. He is not being asked to dig into a well pain of here. Just a simple scene where a big gal flirts and you flirt back while being friendly. Boy, acting is really hard.

An action scene soon breaks out as a pair of armed robbers get inside and menace folks. Unlike in the script, nobody hits Sadie – on camera. As once again, we get a cutaway and something may or may not have happened off camera, for we cut to Rip telling Sam that once he starts moving to hit the floor. He grabs a bar stool screwed into the floorboards, rips it out and tosses it with ease into the head of one of the robbers clonking him. Then… well, then it gets dumber, for Rip grabs a pie off a nearby counter and throws it into the face of the second armed robber and goes down the rest of the counter, picking up the pies and flinging them at the robber. None of this was in the March draft. The second robber shakes off the a pie assault, but Rip charges him, disarms him and flings him down the entire length of another counter as if we are in a Western. Someone clearly decided to goofy up the action sequence, for the kids. Then, the first robber shakes off being clonked in the head with a metal bar stool flung at him (how?) and charges Rip from behind. Sam cries out a warning and Rip clotheslines him down. Sam is naturally much impressed by Rip’s acts, mouth agog and looking up over the countertop of the table and then under it, as Rip turns to her and snaps his fingers with his left hand to congratulate himself, with a big grin. What, no “Rip ‘Em” sign? For shame. Sadie comments she’s okay, and then she congratulates Rip for his acts and everyone in the diner applauds him. I can honestly say I would have preferred the visual of Ripper fixing a printer and then getting applause. I would remiss if I did not mention that as Sam emerges from under the table, she is framed by two applauding extras. On her right is an African-American man in a plaid shirt and a jheri curl who is into it and is earning his pay doing his job. On Sam’s left is an old man who looks about as enthusiastic as a “WWE2K” video game tester.

Next, more dubbing voodoo, as we lose the entire sequence of the hotel room clerk and dispute and instead voice-overs from Sam and Rip let us know that there is only one room. Man, someone really, really hated the first edit of this thing and told them to quickly redub to do a post-prod clean-up of this mess. The film has less running time as a result, so I won’t complain, but the choice of cuts is curious. The scene goes as in the script, only we get weird shots of Sam mocking Rip’s statements to herself as she brushes her teeth before the mirror, then she laughs at something Rip said after she says it in a mocking voice, so ya know the big galoot is growing on her. For his part, Rip is brushing his teeth after having divided the room and they do the sitcom thing where each pauses their brushing to go up to the wall to hear what the other is doing to show they have interest, as soft music blooms in the background. Rip and Sam get into the divided bed, we get the scene of Sam thinking Rip is masturbating violently when he in fact is doing push-ups and then the bed breaks, after the two have a discussion on Sam not dating due to being too busy. When Sam “comically” falls on Rip due to the bed break, Rip walks after she insults him and utters an idiotic line of “You don’t need this. You build bigger walls than I ever could.” And we know this wounds Joan and makes her rethink things. Only I am utterly baffled by why the line should be effective. Rip is saying Sam should feel bad for, uh… what exactly? Not wanting to sleep with him? For not allowing herself to become attracted to someone? I am not sure what the point here is, or why the statement is so armor piercing. It makes zero sense. At all. And yet the film reacts as if Rip is dead-on right.

Sam turns on the light by the phone by the bed, but we get no pantomime of will she or won’t she place the call as in the script. Instead, we just smash cut to Brell berating Sam in his board room. It was in fact Brell who cancelled one of the rooms, forcing Sam to share the room with Rip. Brell gives a rambling speech, listing Sam’s inability to seduce Rip due to her getting the hots for him, mocking her all the while and chewing the scenery with gusto, as Unger watches on. Sam says Rip is a nice guy, to which Brell replies he eats nice guys for breakfast. Sam, in full on Dynasty style rig, stands and says, “Not with my help you won’t.” Brell’s rejoinder is to backhand Sam back down to the couch. Okay, so that leaves Zeus and Brell as the only two people to engage in the male on female violence. In the script, Brell tried to hit Sam, but didn’t make contact and she got out. In the film, Brell makes contact. As Sam bounces off the couch and onto the floor, Unger and Ordway (there he is!) look away in disgust, which Brell notes. This distraction allows Sam to skitter out and Brell yells for her to return, for she owes him.

Let’s stop here for a moment, because the film has lost any semblance at a consistent tone. On the one hand, we have horrific violence perpetrated by Zeus, portrayed in a semi-realistic fashion, and on the other, we have Rip throwing pies at armed robbers as a terrible unoriginal song plays over the soundtrack for laughs. Granted, tonally the diner scene could be claimed by its makers to set up the high-larious shared hotel room scene to further expand the “hijinks” portion of the film, but it doesn’t. The Sam and Rip bed scene takes a lighthearted romantic-comedy as-old-as-the-sand-in-the-beard-of-Moses concept of two strangers having to share close quarters and tries to make it funnier. The key is that the premise is already funny, and the execution is meant to make it funnier. Now, the finished product is in fact not funny, but at least the premise is inherently comedic. There is nothing inherently funny about an armed robbery of a diner. What makes the scene “funny” is the comedic violence done by Rip to resolve the situation. And that’s where the problem lies. Is the violence in the film meant to be cartoony, or is it meant to be serious? That is a question the film has a hard time answering. What it instead tries to do is whenever things gets a little too serious, is to try to lighten the mood by changing things up a bit, which is the cinematic equivalent of having someone play the slide whistle and juggle while an eight year old is suffocated by his drunken stepfather in the background. It doesn’t work.

Back at Rip manor, Sam confesses to Rip, who this time around did not cotton on that Sam was a mole until she told him (and the edit and dubbing makes me think this was a post-production change as well), and we get awkward fooling around. At one point, Rip is trying to find Sam’s bra strap to unsnap and fumbles and it kinda works as a nice and simple scene, with Sam laying atop him and gently mocking him. It appears that Hulk Hogan may not act in a lot of scenarios, but in a scene of fooling around on the couch trying to get a gal’s bra off – he’s a natural. The TV is on and Rip struggles to find a remote to turn off and still mess about with Sam as romantic music plays, only for us to hear on the TV the interview with Zeus, who is calling him out. What hurts this scene is that in the script, it is Sam who invites Rip to try to make the whole situation right and turns on TV just to settle her nerves. Here, Sam walked in on Rip (we presume, the scene is joined in progress due to edits) as TV plays on in the background that we do not hear, but hear as the interview with Zeus is setup. It’s a little thing, yes, but it’s handled badly.

Cut to Rip setting up his charity thing at some outdoor place full of kids. Parked among the kiddies is the 1986 Lamborghini SUV. It is the first Lambo that was off-road and I am not sure if it was Hulk’s or someone else’s. As Rip teaches children the importance of sportsmanship, a helicopter lands with Brell and his champ and minions. Zeus approaches, slowly, due to being on lifts, and wears a sporty upscale denim (I know what I just typed), dungarees, gauntlets, chain with a skull where a bolo should be, and a giant rectangular Z for a belt buckle. Goofy outfit aside, I think it is neat that we are seeing Zeus assemble his outfit in parts, as he is learning and earning to be the champion of Brell. Thus, first, he came in broke as a convict and had wristbands, then upgraded to Wonder Woman gauntlets and got the Zeus pants, with the lettering down the side. Now he is getting the buckle. Each appearance gives a new accessory. Zeus leads the flying V formation of Brell and his two minions towards all the little kids, who cower behind Rip, who juts out a large arm to protect them. Craig is on hand, with his face painted and being a goof and even he tries to shield the kids, or maybe the kids are quicker to hide behind him than he is at spotting danger. Among the assembled is Sam and sad Randy as well. Zeus staggers up to the scene, barely moving due to the lifts, gets in the face of Rip and breathes heavy. Rip breathes heavy as well. Now this is where the film screws up, badly, and its makers realized it, after the fact.

In the script, it is clear Rip could have and would have fought Zeus if not for the kids as he cast his eye about. We also know from a diner scene, as scripted, not as it was filmed, that Rip regards Zeus as unfit for the honored confines of the wrestling ring. The combination of not wishing to lower himself to the standard of Zeus and not wishing to endanger the children are spelled out, clearly. Here, nothing. Rip eyeballs Zeus, nostrils flaring, but there was not one cutaway to the kids and Rip realizing this is not the place. Thus, Zeus showed up, Brell grandstand challenge, and nothing happened, without us hearing of Rip thinking Zeus is not a worthy foe and without us seeing Rip not wishing to endanger the little kids. And only after Rip has done it – or rather not done it by not accepting Zeus’s challenge, the film has to clean up the scene and tell us why Rip did what he did. That is inherently weaker. Instead of letting us identify with Rip and show us what he is thinking, the film will tell us what he thought afterwards. This is piss-poor film storytelling, and worse, the script got it right, but the film didn’t. That was a choice, and a choice to present a weaker story. Let us see how the film tries to clean it up.

As Zeus leads off the flying V formation, the last goose of it is Unger and he actually mad-dog stares at Rip as he struts back with Zeus and Brell. Man, when Unger is dumping on you, you have problems. The kids are all acting like they do not understand why Rip did not fight, and Rip stares off as the helicopter lifts up and goes off. As Rip stares at the copter, we hear voice over with Charlie assuring Rip he did the right thing by not stooping to Zeus’s level. We cut to Rip and Charlie in some quiet spot, rocking white satin jackets, with Rip rocking a teal doo-rag as well. Rip opines Charlie does not think Rip can take Zeus and further says that everyone thinks he backed down (maybe because he did?). Charlie once more assures him he did the right thing and he was proud of him and repeats it. End scene. All right, so the intent is to teach all the little kids that because someone calls you out, then you don’t have to fight. A great lesson in morality, to be sure. And if you watch how the fights progress, the Ripster does not initiate any of them. He dishes out disproportionate violence, but he is always attacked physically first before he responds. But nobody points that out. So what are we to make of it? Besides the fact that is it is bad film storytelling? Well, I think this is the case of rewrite-itis. When someone rewrites the same script over and over and over and over again, they learn the story and the characters inside out, and the motivations gleaned from scenes present in earlier drafts stick with the writer even when said scenes and dialogue is cut. So I think it made perfect sense to the writer or writers who have done edits to this disaster over the course of months that naturally everyone will get why Rip will not fight Zeus. You don’t do cut away shots of little kids to show us what Rip is thinking, because naturally everyone will know it already, right? Well, no, the audience won’t. And they only knew they screwed up after all was said and done. Thus we get a sloppy insert of Rip and Charlie talking about how Rip totally did an amazing thing out there, filmed later, with Rip showing the same satin jacket as Charlie, who wore said outfit to the Rip-Bullet match in the opening scene, which I know was filmed later due to the shooting schedule being somewhat reported at the time and one other trick which I will share with you a bit later. So after editing the script and the crowd scene in such a fashion that they lost the reason for Rip’s actions in it, the film had to do a make-up call of having a scene afterwards of Charlie and Rip talking about how great Rip’s actions were done. Bad filming leads to more post-edits.

Now let’s get some more male on female violence and introduce sexual assault into the world of Hulk Hogan, ya know, for the kids. Sam gets out of her car, a nice red convertible parked next to a mommy wagon. She carries her laundry, a poster tube with rubber bands, a coat and a pebbled flat business purse. A thug grabs her shoulder as she tries to open the door to the staircase going to her apartment (?) and says (post-prod dubbing): “Mr. Brell says it’s party time.” Whoa there, we went from implied sexual assault in the March draft as a result of an errant goon tearing the shoulder strap of Sam to full on implicit rape threat and assault in the film. In a kids movie. Aimed at Hulk Hogan fans. Produced by WWF. The Hell, movie?

The goon slams Sam face front on the hood of a car and we cut to Rip riding up on a Harley. Note, we do not hear the awesome sound of a motorcycle as Sam is at her lowest and the goon as it his closest. Nope. Just a nice cut away from slamming a woman face first on the hood after threatening her with “party time” to a static shot, obscured by a tree, of Rip riding his motorcycle down a winding paved road. What? Then, it gets worse, we see Sam on her back on the pavement of the garage, legs up in the air, with the thug on top of her, on his knees, between her legs, as she fights off his hands, screaming “No! No! No!” In a kids movie!

And then Ripper rounds the very short corner of the garage itself and we still do not hear his Harley. He just rides into camera after a sharp turn and there is the thug atop Sam, and the thug spotting Ripper scrambles. Seeing a sobbing woman on the pavement of the garage, who just had a man atop her and between her legs, Rip casually asks, “Are you okay?” And when a sobbing Sam ekes out a nod, Rip says, “I’ll be back” and rides off after the Rapist. Rip chases down the Rapist, who plays hide and seek between cement columns of the underground garage, as piss-poor quality post-prod dubbing gives out such lines as Rip telling Rapist he better run and the Rapist saying Rip is crazy, while Sam gathers herself up to her knees and then scoots up against the bumper of a car, still sobbing. Oh, and the soundtrack is jaunty, because as stated previously, the tonally the movie is deaf.

Rip eventually catches the Rapist, as in the script, scooping him up with his bike’s handlebars but instead of dunking him into a manhole cover, he just kinda pitches him into a tree, after telling him: “Harley and me and you and the tree” and shoots the Rapist a “Rip ‘Em ” sign… right handed. Rip returns to Sam after disposing of the Rapist and tells her he hates to see her be hurt. Rip, you just threw a man into a tree for rape. You did more damage to a cardigan thug who tried to swing an ineffective pipe at you. That dude went head first through the glass window of a limo, after you beat on him for minutes. Just saying. Your sense of retribution is flawed, Ripper. Joan Severance for her part cries and sells the Hell out of a scene.

Cut to sparks and shadows, as Randy and Craig go to check out Zeus’s workout. Post-prod dubbing lets us know that Craig does not think it is a good idea, but Randy wants to see Zeus in action. Wait, wait, wait, we are back to Randy being a hot-head, via a post-prod dub? Erm, okay, but we have not seen Randy be a hot head, at all, during this entire film. In fact, he has no characteristics, at all, outside of being Rip’s brother. Recall, the film cut his wrestling scenes, and that entire hothead arc. We are an hour into the film and now we learn Randy is a hothead, just before he makes a hothead decision. Also, remember how I said earlier to watch out for what happens with the sets? Well, we’re back at the factory of sparks. We just saw Zeus fight a mook named Lugwrench in one of them, and now we get to fight Zeus fight Rebar Lawless in another. Anyway, Zeus beats on Rebar as Craig is excited to see Zeus, but now Randy appears to be disgusted. Wait, wait, wait, we just had dubbed in audio of the opposite. Why did Randy want to come see Zeus if he was a wet-blanket about the whole thing? And by the way, this is the first time we see Zeus in his ensemble outfit that he would then rock in the WWF: Zeus pants, Z buckle and shirtless, with the gauntlets. Zeus beats down Lawless, then goes into the crowd or just kinda steps towards them which causes a stampede, just as Brell steps out of the remote truck with his minions. As Ordway tells Brell he knew a winner when he saw one, Craig and Randy run by and bowl over Ordway and Unger and fling Brell against the truck. Security guards quickly arrive and Ordway naturally saw the whole thing and knows these kids were trying to attack Mr. Brell. Brell waves everyone off, as he is fine. Brell spots Randy and Craig and tells the guards to step off. Brell is actually happy to see Randy, because he spots young Randolph’s “Rip” T-shirt under his shirt and thinks he (Brell) is well on his way to converting Rip fans into Zeus fans. Randy, with all the emotion of a constipated Wesley Crusher during the first season of “The Next Generation” goes, “We are not Zeus fans!” And Craig lets it slip that Rip is Randy’s brother. Ordway has no idea what to make of this. Unger gives a placid smile. But Brell is delighted by this development. Brell tells Craig and Randy they are VIPs and that Zeus loves VIPs, and orders the guards to “bring them” to the factory of evil sparks aplenty.

Oh dear.

Brell brings up Randy and shows off his T-shirt to a suddenly annoyed Zeus, who now has a posse. Hmm, the script went out of its way to tell us Zeus is all alone, why give him a posse? Seems an odd storytelling choice, considering it will have zero pay off. Brell asks Randy’s name, but Randy says nothing, so Brell backhands him (wow, Brell is much more hands on in the filmed version of the story) and Craig gives Randy’s name to prevent further beatings. Brell goads constipated Randy by telling him that he must be a good fighter himself, what with him being Rip’s little brother and all. Zeus tells him that Rip is yellow, and Craig jumps in and tries to stop Randy from doing… something. Brell backhands Craig into an overturned barrel, because Kurt Fuller wanted more action scenes, I guess. And Randy wails on Zeus, who feels no pain. Zeus grabs Randy by the throat and emits a banshee quail that is high pitched and nothing like what we have heard before. Unger is scared. Ordway is horrified (I think I typed that twenty times during this review). Brell is grinning, lips jerked back to show teeth.

Young Randolph beats on Zeus’s hands, escapes, does a half-roll and eats a Zeus backhand that looks like it hit the air twenty inches in front of Randy’s face, but Randy falls back as the foley artist earns his or her pay making thwack sounds. Zeus kicks Randy down to the feet of Brell, punting him in the ribs, repeatedly. Brell looks down at Randy’s unmoving bodyand shows us his O-face, as Zeus screams out. End scene. Hang on, no neck crank? And while I am glad we did not show the lifeless body of Randy being thrown out of the back of the moving car before Rip’s gym, I have a funny feeling that was filmed but then cut. But we have also cut out what is it that made Randy get injured. We saw one attempted choke, one backhand and two kicks. And while the front double-handed choke looked like it was sunk it, we saw Randy escape it and still fight and evade afterwards. Then, we only saw three points of contact. Yes, I know Zeus is a monster, and Randy is the little brother, but it’s very low impact. A lot was left on the cutting room floor and instead we got reaction shots of Ordway, Unger and Brell, but as the camera cut to them we only heard of blows landing, not that of a hideous mangling. And if the makers of this fine spectacle were concerned with what the kids think – then why include rape? So, the film decreased the Zeus on Randy violence, and Rip used pies instead of much more conventional violence against the robbers, but the film then radically upped the Rapist on Sam violence and made it crystal clear given the positioning of the bodies what would have transpired had Rip been late getting there. Also, at this time, the trend was the opposite in American cinema, with sex being taboo, but male on male violence, so long as it was not gory, being totes fine. So the film is bucking the trend, for no good reason. Once again, you have to marvel at anyone who is more comfortable depicting an attempted rape than a neck crank.

Cut to Rip tearing open a door and getting to Zeus’s gym. As he enters, music starts to blare. Rip covers his ears and rips the speaker off the wall by the entrance and stalks further, screaming “Zeus.” We see that Zeus trains in a traditional square ring, which makes no sense since Brell repeatedly talked of octagonal ring as the battleground of Zeus, but to be fair, we have yet to see Zeus fight in that since the first conflict. All other fights were on location with ill-defined boundaries of combat area. Rip goes about the gym, overturning equipment, until he comes to a room where he spots Zeus, and attacks him, but it is only a hologram and instead Rip crashes through the mirror wall behind it, and faces the projector. Fun fact, Hulk Hogan shoot-cut himself when he smashed the mirror. Rip stalks the gym until he finds the camera from which a chuckling Brell watches the proceedings, with Ordway and Unger, naturally, and then, as in the script, spears it with a weight bar. Ordway and Unger flinch from the projectile, Brell meanwhile is… opaque, or as opaque as Kurt Fuller can be at this stage of his career. I am not sure if he is celebrating that he finally got to Rip, or if he is now wondering what he unleashed or if he is simply scheming. You may also have noticed we have reversed the scenes, because this should have come after the hospital scene, not before it, per the March draft.

And only now, after the gym tear apart do we cut to Rip in funereal black attire, with black fingerless gloves with white ties on them, so you know things are serious, and a black doo-rag with white threads, because it is very serious business, kneeling by the bed of young unconscious Randolph, as useless Charlie sleeps in one armchair of the hospital room and Sam reposes in the other and reads a book “Men Who Can’t Love,” which is just tremendous. As in the script, Rip talks to Randy, and says how it is now his turn to stand up to Zeus as well, and Randy opens his eyes at this (because hope is magic). Randy smiles beatifically at Rip, but then cries, and Ripper breaks down in tears as well.

The Hulkster is baring his soul, and it is glorious and awful.

In the script, Rip walks off, with Sam trying to go after him, but Charlie stopping her for Rip had to find his own way. In the film, he speaks softly, and then Charlie wakes up and Sam stops reading her book, and we simply cut to Brell standing in the octagon, flanked by our boys Unger and Ordway and announces how the most important sports event of all time will take place in two weeks in this very ring. We get a junior varsity Robert Altman slow circle shot of the tiny studio arena with people laying cable and cleaning the platform upon which Brell’s control room will sit and then cut to Zeus’s refurbished gym, where Zeus smashes cinderblocks suspended by chains from the ceiling with his bare hands as some kind of shiny metal diadem encircles his head. Meanwhile, Rip watches as Randy is immersed into a pool while strapped to a board. This is like the “Rocky IV” pre-big-fight montage where Drago trains in a gym while Rocky wades through snow in Siberia while living in a hut, as interpreted by people with no talent and no understanding of how montages work. As in the script, Brell tells all of his execs that Rip won’t win, but afterwards takes Ordway and Unger aside and asks about the elevator.

We see a dressy crowd arriving outside WTN HQ, including Sam in a nice gown, Craig in a suit that fits (good for you, young man), pushing the wheelchair, and the nameless mute girlfriend of Randy. Okay, so she was not in the March draft, unless this is the Leggy Blonde and her role was expanded in the film and then was cut during post-prod edit. Recall, in the script, it is just Craig who accompanies Randy. Hmm, if the Brell plan is to still kidnap Sam, and someone has to push Randy’s chair to ringside (in the script it was Craig), then it would mean Craig could assist Charlie in the search for Sam, because the actor portraying Charlie could do nothing physical, in addition to being unable to act. Let’s watch where this goes. The usher spots the group and tells them to go right this way, but unlike in the script we do not linger to show this is part of the evil plan. In his dressing room, Rip and utterly useless Charlie talk. Rip sits before the mirror and has his belt on the counter before him. And the belt is not the white leather backed Winged Eagle we saw in Act I. This is a much rarer bird – the so-called Andre ’87 belt, which was commissioned, per kayfabe, by Bobby Heenan for the winner of WrestleMania III match between Andre and Hogan. Going into the match, Monsoon assured us the winner would wear the new belt, regardless of whether it was Hogan or Andre, but then Vince changed his mind and when Hogan won, he kept wearing his old belt. Thus, the Andre ’87 is a rare championship belt which was not worn by any champion. Rarer still, in the film, it is shown on white leather, not black. But hey, don’t take my word for it, look up the information on it, and you will see this is precisely the belt Vince McMahon donated to “Planet Hollywood” (remember those?). So what are we to make of the Winged Eagle becoming the Andre ’87 mid-film? It actually gives us insight into the order in which the scenes were filmed. Recall, in ’88, the Winged Eagle had just debuted in February as the championship belt to be defended in the Andre-Hulk match which featured the twin Hebners as a way to setup WrestleMania IV. So the Eagle is brand new. The Andre ’87 was, well, made in ’87, so when the film began the Andre ’87 was available. Then, as production was wrapping, Vince must have made the call that if he was going to make a Hulk Hogan film in which a character played by Hulk Hogan was a WWF champion, then he would want the champ to walk around with the newest belt, so the Winged Eagle was made available for the production. And a perusal of the Wrestling Observers around this time indicates in August of ’88, as filming was winding down, Bill Eadie did his scene as Jake Bullet. So that is when the switch could have been made. So that is why we have the Winged Eagle in Act I and the Andre ’87 in Act II. Don’t worry, it’ll get even messier once you see the belt Rip is rocking when he goes to face Zeus.

Back to the scene, words really do fail me to describe how terrible the acting from ole’ Charlie is here, as he reassures worried Rip that Randy will be here, for Randy’s presence is necessary to be part of the Rip, Randy and Charlie ritual… that we never saw in the first place in Act I. Rewrite-itis strikes again. Also, having shot the film out of sequence, this scene was done prior to Act I, so Rip is referencing a ritual that Hulk Hogan will film later, but which in fact was not filmed (or cut), making Rip’s insistence of Randy being here seem slightly awkward. Speaking of awkward, Craig, Randy, Mute Girlfriend and Sam exit an elevator, where a pair of Security Guards salute them and wave them through… until the Guards wall in Sam as she tries to leave the elevator and then close the elevator doors. On paper, this read dumb. In the film, it is somehow worse, with Craig trying to open the elevator as it is closed and Randy screaming what is going on, for he is in a neckbrace (why? we never saw Zeus do the neck crank from the script) and cannot turn his head. The two Guards bring in Sam into the executive lounge, where Ordway, dripping with slime, offers Sam to watch Zeus “mutilate your boyfriend” from within the confines of the lounge. Unger is there as well, naturally. Sam is escorted into a leather chair and she sits. Unger places the call to Brell to let him know the plan is in effect, as in the script. And Brell makes the call to Rip, just as Randy, Craig and the Mute Girlfriend appear. Brell gives his ultimatum for Rip to take a dive after ten minutes. Hulk Hogan tries to look concerned, and orders Craig and Charlie to find Sam, and that leaves Mute Girlfriend something to do – push the wheelchair of Randy down to the ringside. It also, as stated previously, leaves Craig to do something in the film other than get backhanded. Go, Craig, go!

I am of two minds about what we have seen thus far. On the one hand, we have dialed down some of the crazy, but on the other, the film still makes not a lick of sense, has terrible acting, confusion over who is its core audiences and wildly inconsistent messaging. Outside of Brell and Ordway, the characterizations are all over the place and their motivations are at the mercy of the script requirements. While the edits fine tuned some of the nonsense, what they left behind somehow became messier. The hero is also… Well, stuff happens to him, and he reacts. He does not drive the story. Brell does, as does Zeus. There is no hero’s journey. Merely a challenge deferred until the hero finally decides he wants to fight. That’s just silly. This sloppy excuse for nonsense has assembled elements of traditional storytelling here, but jigsawed them out of place and is now trying to hammer the pieces together whether they fit or not. “Love interest? Put it there, fellas. Come on. Younger Brother, oh come on, I think we know what do with that. Do we have a mentor? No, well, can we get something which pass for one? No. Well, just get that guy over there. Yeah. Okay. Do we have fights? Great. Do we know how to shoot them? Well, we can try, can’t we? Oh. Okay. Well, still, put them in.”

No Holds Barred: The Film: Act III

We start with a mid-torso walking through nothingness, with… the Winged Eagle on a white strap across his waist. And as Rip enters the studio and we get a pan back of the crowd, sure enough Rip has the Winged Eagle. That means the Zeus-Rip and Rip-Bullet fights were saved for last to be filmed, after the Eagle had arrived. But in the film, we see the Eagle in Act I, the Andre ’87 in Act II and the Eagle again in Act III, despite the action in the locker room taking places only minutes earlier. Continuity! Oh, and to mess with my head further Mute Girlfriend gets her one and only line in the film: when an usherette helps her secure Randy’s wheelchair to a ringside spot, she says, “Thank you.”

In a neat moment not even spoiled by Hulk Hogan’s acting, Rip (in the ring) shoots Brell a dirty look (in his command station above) through the glass window. Brell smiles and looks up at the digital readout above him and chuckles to himself. Rip looks up as well and gives a weary nod. He will take the dive, for the sake of Sam. We hear a roar and the dressy crowd looks about in fear as Zeus emerges… dressed like a Dirty, Dirty Cylon Space Hooker. Zeus barely moves, due to the lifts and also sports metal kneecaps and silver toed boots. He’s also accompanied by a pal with a jheri curl (the March draft went out of its way to tell us that Zeus walks alone and has no entourage, here he has a posse). We cut to Rip’s face, which twitches as his nostrils flare and he growls out of the side of his mustache and shakes. Notably, Rip’s throat has, barely covered by makeup, abrasions on it. Hmm, if I had to guess, those are from the marks where Zeus would grab him to pretend to choke him with his hands and Rip’s T-shirt in the takes of the fight filmed before this scene. As the announcer tries to hype up Zeus, Zeus backhands him down and the mic gives feedback, with the Ref rolling out of the ring like a pro. I checked the IMDB credits, and the Ref is listed as Dean Warren Welch and this is his only credit. Hmm. I am wondering if this a cousin of Welches we had never heard about, or just a random local actor with a not that rare a surname. Regardless, the Ref does a good and quick roll out of the ring. Way to go, Dean. Then Zeus and Rip face off and growl at each other. Zeus smacks Rip around and chokes him with his own T-shirt, thus showing where those abrasions might have came from. On the set, Hulk Hogan encouraged Tiny Lister Jr. to make it look good and really get into the character, when Tiny asked what happened if he went too far, Hulk and him agreed on a safe word. Since both liked James Brown music, their codeword on the set was “Free James Brown,” a reference to the then recent news of James Brown being arrested in May of ’88 on drugs and weapons charges. Back to the exec lounge, where Ordway and Unger are glued to the violence on the big screen and the six small screens as well, and they talk about the ratings going up. Wait, what?

In the script, it was explained that the exec lounge small TVs each monitor ratings live – which is a far out concept for ’88, but that is what this universe wants to believe. But in the film, it is never explained or filmed, so the reference makes even less sense. Whoever was the script supervisor on this shoot either gave up or was just plain incompetent. Sam notes the Guards are distracted, while Brell cheers on Zeus whomping on Rip. Zeus beats on Rip some more as Sam plots her poorly planned and silly escape that goes exactly as in the script. Out of all the things to keep, movie. Rip keeps taking a pummeling and then suddenly mounts a comeback, realizing he has to keep up appearances for a bit more, which is as close to subtle as this film gets. The Guards and Minions chase Sam, while in the ring Rip punches Zeus to no effect. We get the poorly filmed stairwell chase, as Rip and Zeus do a test of strength which Rip gives way to appease Brell, as Randy looks on the verge of emotional breakdown. As Sam reaches the floor of the studio arena, Unger and the Guards lunge at her and she screams out, but Craig and Charlie come to the rescue. Instead of a cool forklift scene we get Charlie beating one of the guards in the gut with a fire extinguisher (!) as Craig engages in fisticuffs, though mostly off camera. Go, Craig go.

In the ring, Zeus is focusing on the neck of Rip, choking him with the ropes and beating on it with his big clubbing forearms. All this is well and good, but since we never saw Zeus use the neck crank on Randy, it is meaningless, since we don’t know the neck crank is Zeus’s big move. That deflates some of the drama. Not all of course, we are still seeing a man getting pummeled and choked, but in the script it was more – it was a setup for a big, bad, dangerous move that put Randy in the hospital. Here, it’s just Zeus being a nasty cuss. In a “you can take a wrestler out of the wrestling, but you can’t take the wrestling out of the wrestler” moment, Zeus goes to slam Rip’s head into the exposed turnbuckle. This is obviously a safe move in Hollywood filming, even with a novice such as Zeus doing the action, but Hogan’s instincts take over and he juts out a right forearm to make contact with the nearby top ring rope to slow his impact before hitting his head on the buckle. It’s actually kinda goofily charming to see Hulk Hogan resort to wrestling moves in the middle of a choreographed fight in a film. Next the big moment of Zeus using the corner post as a sword to skewer a prone Rip. As Rip looks about in hazy confusion, he spots the post at the last second.

Out comes Craig, useless Charlie and frazzled Sam, who screams at the ref to stop the fight and then dead-ass stares at Brell, who stops smiling. In the ring, Zeus has Rip in the neck crank, but the camera cuts away quick, and of course without the neck crank of Zeus on Randy, the move just appears to be another in the arsenal of stuff Zeus does to hurt Rip. Divorced from context, it looks goofy as well, so all around negatives on that one. The Ref decides to get into the ring, now, because of Sam’s command, rather than previously when Zeus tried to skewer Rip with the ring post, and gets tossed for his trouble, with him doing a nifty roll. Good job, Dean. In the ring, Zeus does his neck crank and Ripster falls on the mat, convulsing. Once again, without seeing the move on Randy, this is now meaningless, because nobody is explaining what the move does or why it is important. And because the film suddenly got gun shy about violence, the camera keeps panning back from the neck crank, only allowing one close shot of it that also makes it look ridiculous.

As in the script, Rip sees Sam and Randy moving a pinkie, all with a Zeus boot on poor Rip’s neck. But the film has Charlie distract Zeus by yelling at him. What? Zeus walks off Rip’s neck and goes towards Charlie, kicking the twenty inches of air in front of Charlie, which causes Charlie to tumble. Well, that’s two things that Charlie did, but this time to the detriment to the film. It is not that Rip starts powering back upon seeing his beloved safely at ringside and his young brother trying to overcome paralysis (that was never mentioned in the film as well), it is literally Charlie calling off the mook beating on him and sacrificing his feeble old body to give Rip time to recover. That undermines Rip. He should have made the comeback himself, not had an assist. And of all the people who should have known that, it is Hulk Hogan. Baffling choices abound. Finally, Rip lies on the buckle, sweat pouring down his body and he looks out at the cheering crowd and mounts his comeback. So, hang on, it’s not the sight of Sam that makes him power up. It’s not seeing Randy fight back paralysis. And it’s not even his decrepit and quite useless trainer get kicked in the mush. It’s people chanting his name. That, that right there is pure Hulk Hogan. But once again, it is wrong for the film. So Hulk whiffs on one time that he should have known better. And then whiffs on another due to his nature. Regardless, both were dumb things to film.

The rest proceeds as in the script, though more slowly. Rip mounts his comeback. Beats down Zeus. And then hits him with his finisher, knocking him out of the destroyed ring. Zeus falls on the carpeted floor from the apron of the destroyed ring. Then, Rip stalks him. This is poorly explained by the film, and by poorly, I mean not at all, but Rip wants a little frontier justice for what Zeus did to Randy and do the neck crank on him. Someone decided that would not play well, and also having not seen Randy get his neck cranked, we don’t know why Rip is going for it or what it’s impact is, having only seen the move once now when Zeus did it to Rip and we are still hazy on the mechanics of it. But when Rip goes to pick up Zeus, Zeus does a zombie sit up and grabs Rip by the throat. This is why on TV wrestling fights have announcers, to explain that which the wrestlers cannot explain themselves. In the film, Brell’s announcer (having recovered from a Zeus backhand rather quickly), simply calls the action as a trained actor with zero wrestling knowledge does off the screenplay and lines given to him prior to filming. He fails to explain what Rip is doing or why, which may be a good thing, as that means they did not have to awkwardly post-prod dub him over due reticence to go into details of the neck crank. Curiously, once the action spills outside, the Rip and Zeus fight takes on more pro-wrestling match characteristics than their in-ring bout, with Zeus grabbing a bear hug, ramming Rip into the post from the outside, and Hulk Hogan selling it as he would in a wrestling ring. This is where Hulk Hogan does turn it up a notch, and you can see him start to lead Zeus through the match as Hogan pictured it and him calling the action. In the ring, the broad moves of Zeus and Tiny Lister Jr. wearing those stupid lifts made everything stilted and overly choreographed, but now outside, Hulk Hogan does better at calling a match. For about thirty seconds you catch a glimpse of what this film might have been if Tiny Lister Jr. wasn’t such a stiff and the fights better resembled a pro-wrestling match. Also, it only now occurs me that Randy is wearing Rip’s cross, and that should have been a big deal, and is a big deal in the March draft. Here, one more scene excised to keep running time going, but goodness me we needed those three minutes of Rebar Lawless wrestling over a piece of wrought iron with Zeus in the Sparks Factory Part Deux.

Randy falls out of a wheelchair and Zeus punts him and goes up the staircase (to escape?). Rip chases after and gets up to the scaffolding before Brell. I will give the film this, it makes more sense on film than in the script as to how each participant ended up there fighting in front of Brell, and they made the scaffolding extra wide to accommodate a pair of 300 pound men doing a mini-fight up there. The fight ends with Rip doing his finisher on Zeus and killing him by having him fall back 20 plus feet through the air and into the collapsed ring, as the audience cheers. Then Rip starts making animal noises and goes after Brell. I would estimate 15% of Rip’s dialogue is growling noises in the film, by the way. Zeus – if you count yelling – closer to 90%. Brell is cornered, scared and gets electrocuted, by backing his buttocks against an exposed wire, and the crowd cheers even harder. Because the only thing better than murder is a double murder. Randy is inspired by the murder to stand up and a smiling Rip comes down, hugs Randy and gets in the ring in a really awkward cut and shoots the crowd a “Rip ‘Em” sign, and freeze frame and roll credits. Except, because it is a freeze frame, we realize it is not in fact Rip doing the sign at the studio arena, it is footage taken earlier from Act I, from the Kansas arena after he beat Jake Bullet. Our film ending screen shot is from the start of the film. Is this what George Lucas meant when he said “The Phantom Menace” was poetry because it rhymed? Did the “Rip ‘Em” sign scene in the studio turn out that badly? Why the edit?

Let’s try to discuss.

No Holds Barred: The Film: The Discussion

There are three films here. The film as written. The film as filmed. And the film as edited and presented as a final product. The script was bad, but goofy and had so many insane touches it almost developed a charm. The film as filmed is harder to judge, but seems to have been closer in spirit to the script than what we end up watching. Still, even if there is a director’s cut or extended cut of this film, it would reveal a film at odds with itself: how much violence to show, and against whom and when? The film as presented as a final product is a mess. I have already touched upon the major issues in my review, but what stands out the most is how idiotically inept the post-prod dubbing and edits were made and the choices made about what to edit. Randy has nothing to do but to stare, weep and fall, thanks to the film removing any scenes which could in any way define him. Craig comes off as more of a rounded character than him. Craig! Randy’s Girlfriend was clearly meant to be a bigger role and while I doubt it would have made the film better, it’d be nice to learn more about her. For a film that goes to the trouble to tell us Randy is closer to Rip due to their parents’ death (and this, in a kids movie, in the first few minutes) just to explain why there are no parents in the scene where Randy lays in the hospital, we are thrown this weird female character that has one line and we don’t know. It is not clear what happened to Ordway and Unger either. In the March draft, Charlie pins them to the wall with a forklift, in the film, it is presumed Craig kicked all their asses (!) while Charlie uses a fire extinguisher one of the two guards. Did the audiences not react well to Craig punching Unger? Seems like an odd choice. The entire chain of scenes and sequences involving Sam and Rip while out on location shoot were cut to a mere voice-over, and comes off weird. But the crown of nonsense is taken by the Zeus and Randy scene which is so butchered as to make it impossible to tell why Randy is in a wheelchair, paralyzed, wearing a neck brace and was nearly in a coma. Instead of talking of the film’s many faults, it may be easier to talk of the things that did work.

Joan Severance and Rip fooling around after she escapes Brell’s clutches actually goes well for a scene involving a pair of novices under the errant eye of a confused director and bad lighting, poor plotting and terrible dialogue. Ordway’s character is a joy and his scenes with Brell are only mired by the bad dialogue, so that when they have non-verbal scenes they come off much, much better. Stan Hansen got free medical insurance for three years by walking around with his mid riff exposed for a couple of weeks, pretending to defecate in a horrible bathroom and telling men they have tiny genitalia. Good for him! And the non-verbal scenes in the board room, with a toxic manager and a culture of fear rang true, because the people filming it could relate. Also, Joan Severance is an attractive woman, whose beauty shines through even the bad lighting, terrible cinematography, a director of photography who should be hanged and a silly script. So there’s that.

Let us talk about how this film was released, and then dwell a bit on its mystery budget.

In our social-media 24-hour-news at-a-glance connected world, a “troubled production” would get instantly exposed. As soon as any feature film gets even a whiff of trouble, the stench of it reaches all our nostrils immediately. But such was not in the case in 1989, and horrific films could sail through their entire production cycle and land with a thud in the theaters, with only a few trade papers and critics giving early warnings. The earliest warning of the awfulness of “No Holds Barred” came in the form of not what was said, but rather what was left unspoken. Jesse “The Body” Ventura, portraying himself as an announcer in the film, and when reached for comment about the picture, refused to discuss it. Ventura could be accused of many things, but being tight lipped was not one of them. But the second and much better publicized warning came in March of 1989, when a screening was arranged for the distributors, to let them see on what they would soon bid. Most left halfway through the picture. Of those who stuck through, only two expressed interest in distributing the film. One was a small outfit whose name has been reported differently by various publications, and who could not recall of ever hearing it. The second company was New Line Cinema, and their bid for the rights was zero dollars.

New Line Cinema executives indicated they would distribute “No Holds Barred” to the theaters but not pay any fees for the right to do so, oh and furthermore, New Line said they would not pay to actually distribute or promote it either, leaving Vince McMahon with the bill for the cost of getting the film into the theaters and all the commercial and marketing work, but allowing McMahon to use their distribution network to get the film into the theaters. Essentially, New Line Cinema would let Vince distribute the film himself, and pay for the privilege. And New Line Cinema won the bid. Recall, Vince McMahon had no major studio backing. This was his first effort, with no track record of success, and he had no name talent behind the camera and only Hulk Hogan before it. And while Hulk Hogan was a brand, why would Paramount, Warner Brothers or even Orion bother to distribute a film in which they had no say in making, and in which they held no financial stake? Well, why would any company risk financial exposure in a project presented to them after it has been completed? There is only one – if they thought the project was well done and financially viable to justify the risk of investment. Since none wanted to invest in the distribution of the film, it was a clear signal it was terrible. And since a terrible film with no studio backing would find it hard to get into the increasingly crowded (even in 1989) theater space, New Line Cinema essentially was loaning Vince McMahon their good name to even get theater chains to look at the film.

“No Holds Barred” therefore faced the challenge of not just earning back its budget, but also making back enough money on top of it to cover the costs of marketing and distribution, and do it all with an unfavorable money split with theaters who knew a bad film when they saw it, given all that had transpired with New Line Cinema. And that’s where the math gets really crazy, because to this day no one knows the budget of the film, because Vince McMahon kept changing the number to try to present the film as a success, and had to keep reducing the announced budget as the additional costs multiplied. Thus, when the film finished shooting in August of ’88, the budget was announced by Vince as being $11 million. By the time of the first screening, it had somehow become $6 million. And then, once New Line Cinema got done putting the boots Vince and the picture, the budget suddenly became $1.5 million. Vince tried to make the film profitable by retroactively reducing the cost of making it. For his part, in his ghostwritten autobiography Hogan put the budget at $8 million, in 2002. I have a guess as to how that numbered was arrived at, and I will share my theory in a bit. The only independent contemporary source who took the trouble to cover the financial goings on of the WWE at this time, our very own Dave Meltzer, estimated the budget at somewhere between $15 and $19 million, a figure which makes sense to me. However, given the realities of distribution and marketing, the total cost of getting this film into the theaters and trying to get anyone to see it must be therefore put at double that. So it is more than likely, the final costs of the film come out to close to $40 million. That’s a lot of red to try to turn to black.

Vince McMahon has often been accused of living in his own reality, and there are plenty of examples of him seeing things from a point of view not shared by anyone else, but by mid April of 1989, he had realized the enormous costs he would need to cover to turn profit and tried to do his best to try to salvage the situation. First, the retroactive budget revision as outlined above. Second, earmark the use of WWF TV to aggressively market the film and use the commercial time allocated to WWF on their TV programming by TV networks to promote the film instead of being sold to their regular advertisers. Given that the WWF had become a TV juggernaut, such things alone would have given the film exposure few non-studio films could ever hope to achieve. But it would still not be enough, because Vince could do the math. No matter how much he promoted the film, his aforementioned efforts could only be rewarded if the public actually turned out to watch the film. If they had not, then while he could hide the costs from the public and the hacks who wandered into Madison Square Garden to write a terrible column for terrible local papers about pro-wrestling success and slap the word “bodyslam” into the headline, he really could not achieve profit unless he increased revenue, and the odds were now very much against him. So he turned the problem on its head. Instead of using the film to turn Hulk Hogan the wrestler into Hulk Hogan the movie star and ride the profits off the theater going public, what if he used the film to turn one of the actors in it into a wrestler and ride the profits off the wrestling public coming to see Hulk Hogan wrestle one of the actors from the film – Zeus. After all, Vince may not know how to make a film, promote it, or distribute it, or do the same to a boxing bout, but he knew pro-wrestling. So what if he were to use the entire film as nothing more as a giant commercial for a new character and opponent to face Hulk Hogan in the world in which Vince felt he was master, and conquer the box office from the wrestling side.

With WWF TV machine all in on promoting “No Holds Barred” for over a month and WWF TV announcers and commentators suggesting the film might net Hulk Hogan an Oscar (yes, that really was a talking point on WWF TV), the film opened on June 2, 1989 in 1,318 US theaters and grossed $4.957 million in its opening weekend. The critics were not kind, and it was immediately understood barring great word of mouth, the drop off would be steep and no more than $15 or $16 million could be squeezed out of the theaters, though Hulk Hogan would tell us the film was a great success, since it was holding its own against “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and beating “Ghostbusters II,” which is an idiotic lie, but would not even crack the top ten lies told by Hulk Hogan. Records show Hulk Hogan’s film dropped like a stone and not once – in any market – doing better than “Ghostbusters II.” As for Dr. Jones, his film would go on to gross $197 million (not adjusted for inflation). After three weeks “No Holds Barred,” a third of theaters stopped showing it, and the rest would try various gimmicks to drum up any sort of audience, such as a double bill with “Pink Cadillac.” In a month, the picture would be gone from the theaters entirely, earning $16 million, and becoming a flop. And the $16 million provides a clue to the $8 million budget Hogan said, because he too could have heard of the math of the costs of the film doubling since WWF was doing all the marketing and etc., and since even Hulk Hogan could not claim the film was box office greatness, the best he could do was to make the film break even by giving the budget as half the revenue collected from the film, therefore quoting the budget at $8 million. Or at least that’s Greg theory.

After the film’s release, Vince McMahon recalled that during the filming of “No Holds Barred,” Hulk Hogan promised to return his salary should the film not be profitable. McMahon therefore impatiently waited for Hogan to give back the alleged million dollars he paid him for the film. It would be a long wait. Forever, in fact. Whether the conversation took place or not is impossible to know, but even if it could have happened, nobody who has ever worked with Hulk Hogan in any capacity could ever be under any illusion he would forsake the First Rule of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. Prior to his foray into reality television and his subsequent divorce, Hulk Hogan was often called the shrewdest negotiator in pro-wrestling and the smartest with his money. Hogan would not part with a million dollar paycheck based on the one sided recollection of a conversation which may or may not have occurred. However, years later, Hogan did acknowledge he was aware Vince thought he would and that Hogan’s refusal to return it hurt his relationship with Vince. Only in pro-wrestling could one be expected to bribe one’s boss to make him happy by giving back the money earned from work done for him.

For most people involved in the film behind the camera, “No Holds Barred” (1989) was but a weird blip on the radar of their uninspiring careers, save for the writer most associated with this flop, whose career was effectively over as a result of it. The extent of his contribution to the film has been disputed by the Hulkster himself, but as we have seen, the Hulk has a tendency to gild a lily. At the end of the day, the man whose name was on the script paid the price for having lend his name to it. The director slunk off to the world of TV and continued his existence largely unscathed.

Most of the talent before the camera went nowhere, some remained good character actors, others stuck to being bad ones, and for some this was to be their sole feature film or TV credit. Some of the men who fought Zeus were wrestlers in their own right and they tried to squeeze their five minutes of fame from it into the wrestling world and failed. The most successful wrestlers were those who went into the film already successful in their chosen profession. Stan Hansen continued to wrestle for All-Japan Pro-Wrestlingr. As for Hulk, the film did dim his wattage considerably in the eyes of Hollywood. Hogan has a different tale to tell, but Hogan always has a tale to tell. For Joan Severance she went on to have an uninspired career as well, but seems to have regarded her time on the set of NHB fondly, and had nothing but nice things to say about Hulk Hogan, calling him a “teddy bear.” As for Tiny Lister Jr., the film is partially responsible for landing him the part of bully Deebo from the “Friday” films. When casting began, at first the makers of the film concentrated on locating football players to be physically imposing, but none they tried out for the part made a positive impression, then someone asked what if they were to cast pro-wrestlers and that is how Tiny Lister’s name came about. The strangest knock on effect of the film came about in Memphis, where they decided they had to get a Zeus of their own, giving a career break to one Charles Wright, our favorite supreme pimping voodoo priest.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for sticking me with on this journey. The balcony is now closed. Have a good one, and please be safe.

No Holds Barred: The Script: Act II

When we last left our hero Ripper, he was making men crap their pants. Next scene: a French restaurant.

Sam and Ripper are seated in a corner table and Sam indicates she was not sure if Ripper was going to like this place and hopes there is something on the menu he can like. An “effete waiter sashays up to their table” (them’s the script, folks) and speaks with a heavy French accent. Sam orders, but Ripper studies the menu. The waiter decides Ripper is too dumb to understand the menu (?) and suggests Ripper order a cheeseburger and a hot dog instead. Ripper then finally starts his order… in get this… French! Ooh. Roasted! But wait, there’s more. Ripper keeps up the order, going on, ordering four items, as the waiter fidgets. Finally, the waiter admits he is not French and speaks in perfect English and does not even know French.

Ripper then goes to the kitchen, where he is greeted with cheers. Because he is a famous wrestler? Nope.

Busboys remove Ripper’s jacket and the chef steps up and anoints Ripper with a toque, and Ripper takes charge of the kitchen, “like a maestro.” He slices, dices, stirs, tastes and leads the “epicurean symphony” at the end of which “the kitchen staff gives him a standing ovation.”

…

Let’s pause to absorb. Ripper is a champion wrestler, whose matches help NTN skyrocket to be the best rated network, he energizes the marketing department, the ladies fall in love with him – like instantly, he rides a Harley, can beat up four men at the same time – even if they are armed with pipes, chains and brass knucks, he recognizes antique furniture and can spot a fake at a glance, he speaks French, and he is also apparently an accomplished French chef who regularly takes over kitchens to prepare a four course dinners. Hogan commissioned this script and is alleged to have rewritten it, so the draft I have is per Hulk Hogan’s own admission something he himself wrote. Don’t worry, it will get better, and by that I mean much worse.

Meanwhile, back at the table, Sam waits impatiently, but have no fear for the Chef, followed by the humbled waiter wheels up a cart “on which sits Ripper’s incredible meal.” Ripper appears as well, and is thanked by the Chef for his recipes. That’s right, the ole’ Ripper taught the Chef how to make the food off the Ripper’s recipes. Sam is impressed. By the way, what are the odds that Sam picked the one French restaurant in town where Ripper knows the Chef and runs the kitchen? Or does Ripper do this at multiple places? Is he like the Kwai Chang Caine of French cuisine, going from place to place, beating down mooks in the ring and satiating his soul by making incredible French food afterwards? I mean, I would totally watch that on Netflix if someone were to make it. Just saying.

Back to Brell. He and his two minions Unger and Orbach, approach a “sleazy basement bistro.” I don’t think I ever been to a sleazy bistro, but am willing to give it a try. The establishment is called Spike’s Bar, where a grimy poster announces “TONITE AT SPIKE’S – NO HOLDS BARRED TOUGH GUY CHALLENGE.” Hey, that’s the script’s name, kinda. The minions of Brell are scared, but he thinks you never know what you can find in a place like this, this is not because Brell is fearless but because Brell’s ego is so large as to think he can overcome anything and anyone. And that is the one consistent trait of Brell in Acts I and II and it really does center his character. Inside the bistro, we see a dark and dingy “blue collar bar.” The jukebox plays country and western and in the center is “a crude, makeshift octagonal ring.” I am for one shocked Hulk Hogan did not claim he had invented the octagon that UFC uses due to his writing of this script. Humble of him. In the ring a pair of “headbangers” are beating each other bare knuckles. I am not sure the author knows what “headbangers” are, but maybe he’s being literal? As in, they bang heads of others? Let’s let it play out.

(Future Greg: yes, that is what the script meant, the film actually clears it up better).

A raunchy waitress (that is literally her script name/designation) approaches and when Unger asks to be seated, Waitress makes them for cops, but when they deny it, she uses a derogatory name for homosexuals and tells them, “The gay bar’s across the street.” Them’s the jokes, folks. In the ring, the headbangers are beating on each other to the crowd’s delight, as Brell looks on, intrigued, and his minions are horrified at the brutality of it all. Unger wonders where the referee is, and a local patron tells him that the ref stays outside the ring and explains short of murder, it’s anything goes, and the last man standing wins. Brell beams, “Those are my kind of rules.” After attempting to pay for their drinks with a credit card and causing a faux-pas for it for it (cash only, pal!), Unger is threatened with bodily violence by a (different) waitress who promises her brother will rip their lips off. The brother is simply described as a Neanderthal. Once more Brell takes charge and produces a hundred dollars and tells the waitress her brother can keep the change if he beats down the last man standing in the ring, which the brother does, with gusto. Naturally Brell’s minions are horrified by the violence some more, but Brell eyes the cheering masses and says this is what his network needs. Unger is mortified (why does Brell keep such a wet blanket around?), “These people would cheer a hanging.” To which Brell rejoins, “Exactly. That’s the beauty of it.” Disgusted, Unger goes to use the lavatory, which is then described in detail, as being disgusting. Unger’s pal Orbach joins him at the trough (no separate urinals) and Unger predicts “Never in a million years will Brell get this on the air.”

Cut to Brell standing on the steps of his United Network corporate headquarters and announcing his new show “No Holds Barred Battle of the Tough Guy Challenge.” A tourney will be held at “Spike’s Bar, downtown.” Hang on, is this a national network, or regional? The action seems to take place in only one town, and Brell doesn’t name the town at all. Brell announces that the winner will get $100,000, tax free. Meanwhile, across town, we are shown various locations featuring such tough guys as Klondike Kramer, who is working out in a seedy gym, and hearing the announcement. Then there’s a Hell’s Angel named Brock Chiseler, who crushes walnuts with his bare hand and eats them shell and all. There is a construction worker Ernie Biggs who works the compressor drill one handed. And junkyard forklift operator (huh?) Bulldog McPherson.

But all these terrifying men pale in comparison with a con in the Iron Pit prison yard, where pumping iron cons all scramble out of the path of an ominous shadow. “We never see his face. Only quick cuts of his body. Incredibly huge biceps. Tree trunk neck. Treacherous hands.” Wait, how can one’s hands be depicted to be treacherous? Does he have a Benedict Arnold tattoo on one hand and a Quisling on the other? We catch “a glimpse of one his cold blooded eyes. We see him jerk the heaviest weights. He makes a sound like a wild animal.” He is named Zeus. As introduction to a big-bad go, it is effective.In the warden’s office, the warden reviews the document before him. He hears the clank of chains. Manacled feet appear. It is Zeus. The warden is disgusted that the hippies at the parole board tell him that Zeus has served enough time, but if he had his druthers, Zeus would stay locked up forever. Warden slides the papers over to Zeus, who grabs the document and the warden shrinks in fear.

At some sound stage, Sam uses a pay phone to tell someone that all is fine and she has it under control and that he is here. He is Ripper. And he is doing a commercial for a computer. The director tells him what to do: he is to hit two keystrokes and the computer screen will light up and the printer starts up and he will plug the company that makes… something. It is not clear. Anyway, Ripper is to hit two keys, and then the printer will work. Cameras roll, and as Ripper hits the two keys, nothing works. Ripper quickly identifies the problem is with the computer, but the commercial director tells him to just try it again. Same thing happens. A tech guy is called, and looks about, and Ripper tells him, “You might check whether you’re in serial or parallel interface mode.”

That’s right. In addition to being a wrestling champion, French chef, great amateur wrestler, noted badass, antique furniture expert, Harley rider and sex symbol, the Ripper knows IT, because of course he does! This is Hulk Hogan commissioning this story, at least, or personally writing it out himself. This is what Hogan wants people to think he is, does and can accomplish.

By the way, I am guessing the fella who wrote that bit of Ripper’s dialogue once tried to use a non-IBM printer with an IBM PC in the early ’80s. Just a hunch. Anyway, the technician ignores the Ripper and tells all it is busted. Naturally Ripper fixes it himself. No applause from everyone this time around, but Sam is once more intrigued. How could she not be? The man knows French cuisine, fixes PC and fights people for a living.

Brell pulls up in his limo at Spike’s bar. There is a new neon sign over the door: UNITED NETWORK PRESENTS: LIVE, FROM SPIKE’S BAR: THE NO HOLDS BARRED TOUGH GUY CHALLENGE. Inside, the scum of the Earth prepares to do battle as Brell gazes on them with delight, he naturally gets in the ring and once more repeats the name of the contest. One by one, the men do battle with each other, as the crowd of regulars, the curious and the TV tech look on in disgust. The fella who seems to be doing the best is the king of the regulars – Neanderthal. Then the door is slammed open and Zeus wanders inside, backlit by the searchlights from outside on the street that were used to advertise the show in the bar. This is something I find interesting in the screenplay – its uneven attempts to put a modicum of realism into the proceedings.

Zeus goes towards the ring, a Production Assistant tries to get in his way. She is pie faced slammed into the ground. And we finally get the shot of Zeus’s face: “Savage. Scarred. Bitter.” He gets to the ring, and the Ref shoots a look to Brell, who locks eyes with Zeus and likes what he sees. “Let him fight,” the would-be emperor of cable TV commands. Zeus steps inside and lays waste to all the colorfully named tough guys. Back at Ripper’s house, Randy and his High School Sweethearts hang out, while Randy’s wiener pal Craig watches TV alone, forever alone. Craig is watching the battle and calls all to come watch with him. Naturally, Randy and his harem go over to watch as Zeus dismantle Brock Chisler. In the kitchen, Charlie cooks and sings to himself, and then wanders into the room and “can’t believe his eyes. He looks closer. His worst nightmare.” Back at the bar, Zeus has only one challenger remaining – Neanderthal. Zeus beats on him, badly, as Brell beams looking at the horrified faces, and the TV commentator says he is going to be sick. Ripper arrives, with his flight bag (okay, so there is more than one town, and he traveled by air to the commercial shoot, okay). Charlie, still in his worst day-mare, does not notice Ripper. Ripper inquires and finds Charlie has a tragic backstory involving Zeus, for Zeus was the man he was training prior to Ripper and Zeus had it all, strength, speed, and the skills, but he was just too dang crazy and Charlie cuts ties after a month, and then he heard Zeus killed a man after the bell. At no point does Charlie say the name of the man, just calling him by pronouns. Craig decides this is the best time to ask Randy if Ripper could take the fella, and even young Randolph is not sure though he makes sure to say “Yes, of course.” The Ring Announcer in the bar is ready to proclaim Zeus the winner, but knows not his name, so Zeus takes the mic and in “a long, vile whisper” says his name. “The name echoes.” Ripper stares into the TV and Zeus seems to stare back at him. Eye to eye.

The next day at UTN, Brell is all smiles and his minions bask in his victory. “The overnights are in. We were number one in our time slot, earning a 24 rating and a 39 share.” Whoa there, a 24/39 would put the “No Holds Barred Battle of the Tough Guys” up there with the biggest made-for-TV movies in the US in the 80s. More impressive still, this is an ongoing TV series, not a one-off TV event, so that puts it up there with Cheers, Roseanne and the Cosby Show and above Monday Night Football. Sadly, there is a fly in Brell’s ointment. Even as his minions applaud, he notices two refuseniks. One is a family values guy and he hates what the network has become and after 22 years of service tenders his resignation. The other is unhappy over all the negative publicity. Brell counters by saying people may have hated it, but they watched. Oh, and to stifle any mutiny, he brings Zeus into the boardroom, in case anyone wants to talk smack to him directly. All are cowed, but Zeus does not want to be here. Brell ignores Zeus’s objections and keeps yapping about how his show “is going to put Ripper’s show right into the toilet.” Zeus reacts at Ripper’s name and Bell picks up on it.

While the whole thing is still bad, I really do like how Zeus was introduced, and it is interesting to note how Brell is manipulating him even as Brell is being oblivious to things and staying true to his character. The dialogue is still atrocious, and the movie world makes not a lot of sense, but some lines are genuinely funny, mostly Brell’s. Let’s see where it goes.

Up next, a shoot on location, inside an “industrial icehouse,” where a parka wearing announcer announces the newest challenger to Zeus, one Icepick Perkins, who wears “filthy longjohns, a tight turtleneck and insulated boots.” Quite a look that. Zeus appears, bare chested, “oblivious to the cold” and makes short work of Perkins. So the fights are now in an enclosure of some kind, on location? Did we already discard the eight sided ring? Brell watches the ratings go up and gloats. Meanwhile, in another sound stage, the Ripper shoots another commercial, this time involving babies in a nursery. The onset Baby Wrangler (that’s her name/title in the script) cannot get a baby to calm down to shoot the commercial. Three guess who can. Go on. You have three tries. That’s right, Ripper! Babies love him. As do babes. A distracted Sam answers a phone call and says she will call back. Ripper does the commercial and the baby loves him as he changes its diaper like a pro. Man, is there anything he cannot do? Fail. He cannot fail, me lads.

Backstage, Ripper wants to get some food and this time kiboshes Sam’s attempt at an upscale joint that serves Italian food. “No more waiters with accents. This time I’ll choose the place,” Ripper demands. He takes her to a “classic 1950s aluminum siding diner in the bad part of town.” The owner is Sadie, described by the script as “all 200 pounds of voluptuous woman, stuffed in a tight-fitted waitress uniform.” Wowzers. Sadie knows Ripper from back in the day, and tells Sam that Ripper is quite the man, because of course characters only exist to fight Ripper, praise him, be awed by him, and/or serve as his love interest. Meanwhile, Sam tries to advance the plot with all the cunning of Baldrick. She says, “I’m not so sure this place fits the image we’re working on for you.” “What do you mean,” asks Ripper. “I don’t know,” answers Sam. “Instead of you, I could picture that new fighter here. What’s his name… Zeus.” Ripper says that Zeus does not belong anywhere, when two armed robbers burst in and try to hold up the joint. One of the men makes the mistake of laying his hands on Sadie, and Ripper beats on them with a barstool and stuffs one man into a dish washer. Well, at least they are keeping the action snappy.

Next up, a scene from the 1950s, as Ripper and Sam go to check into a hotel, but wait for it – there is only one room left, and the rest of the hotels in the area are sold out. There was a snag with the reservations. Sam frets, but Ripper says they’ll take the room. In their now shared room, Sam gets defensive and pretty much accuses Ripper of wanting to have his fiendish ways with her, but Ripper wants none of that. Sam goes to change in the bathroom, while Ripper takes out a roll of tape and divides the room in half with a sheet hanging over the bed, with each of them having a side. Sam braces and exits to find the Cotton Wall. She is in her frilly nightgown. Ripper is his gym shorts. So, ya know, mood. Ripper shows off the wall and they agree to stay on their side of the bed. Then, a scene introduces the concept of masturbation to the Hogan fans. Sam tries to sleep but hears rhythmic movement of the bed and heavy breathing, coming from Ripper’s side. She looks over to find his feet on the bed and his hands on the carpet, doing push-ups. His muscles glisten and she stares and Ripper catches her looking. Ripper finishes his workout, turns over into bed and the legs of the bed on his side give out, collapsing from under the weight of so much man. Sam’s side of the bed tilts up on an incline and she lands atop Ripper. Ripper makes a joke, Sam tries to roll away, but keeps rolling back onto him. Ripper makes more jokes, and Sam accuses Ripper of arranging the whole thing. Hurt, Ripper leaves, saying he will sleep on the couch. For her part, Sam nervously digs out a phone number, grabs a phone and starts to dial, reconsiders and dials again. Cut to Brell screaming at someone in his office about failing to do a favor for him, and that the person called him and said that their heart is telling them what they are doing is wrong and that they can’t do it anymore. The person is Sam, the mole. Brell goes to hit Sam, but she ducks and scrambles out of the office. Dames, eh?

On a construction site onsite location shoot, Zeus fights construction worker Rebar Lawless. I love the names, script, keep ’em coming. Craig sneaks onto the site, with Ripper’s young brother Randy to watch the proceedings. Randy posits it is a bad idea, but Craig tells him not to be a chicken as they won’t get caught. Hang on, Randy was the hothead, wasn’t he? It was Craig who was a wiener and wanted to get Randy to get his head in the game. I mean, yes, Craig saw the Zeus fight first on TV and called over Randy, but that wasn’t dangerous – it was catching a program on TV. This is sneaking onto a closed set at a construction site to watch Zeus fight in person. It should be Randy telling Craig they should check out this guy live to see what sort of threat he represents to Ripper, and wet blanket Craig telling Randy he has a bad feeling about this. Come on, script, you are screwing up simple things. Randy and Craig watch Zeus dismantle the construction worker, and cameras catch sight of them. Brell, in the control truck (why would the head of the network be on a remote shoot?) spots them and orders Unger to have the security goons bring the lads. Craig and Randy try to run by are stopped and herded by Unger the Minion of Brell and a pair of security guards. Brell goads Randy about seeing Zeus in action. Randy keeps his mouth closed, so Brell says, “Too afraid to speak up? That’s exactly what I’d expect from Ripper.” Wait, is Ripper a last name? That line seems weird. Anyway, them’s fighting words and Randy says he saw what he saw and that Zeus is sick, so Brell brings Randy and Craig to meet Zeus and tell him that to his face. Zeus is changing in the lockerroom, his shirt is off and “his body is like a block of granite. Scars and tattoos.” Uh-huh. Anyway, the boys are scared to say anything, so Brell rips open Randy’s shirt to reveal a Ripper T-shirt underneath. Zeus reacts. Brell tells Zeus young Randolph is the brother of Ripper. Zeus gets closer. “Randy cranes his necks (sic) to look up into Zeus’s vile visage. Zeus drools and slobbers onto Randy’s face.” Zeus calls Randy’s brother “yellow.” Ooh, snap.

Cut to Charlie’s gym, where Randy is working out like a madman. Ripper comes in and senses a disturbance in the Force. Randy tells him what happened and adds that after Zeus said what he said, Randy wanted to call him a liar, but he was scared. Ripper assures him he did the right thing. At Sam’s apartment, a nervous Sam paces and Ripper strolls in, invited. The TV is on in the background. The script tells us Sam turned on the evening news to get her mind off things. Sam confesses to Ripper that Brell hired her to obtain information on Ripper, she was game, thinking that was it, but it dawned on her that Brell wanted to more – he wanted to own Ripper and destroy him. Oh Vince, oh Vince and your paranoia about Ted Turner stealing your talent, in the Spring of ’88. Anyway, Sam begs forgiveness, but Ripper says he forgave her the other day. When he was checking them out from the hotel, he saw the phone number on the bill, realized it was Brell’s and put two and two together. Because of course he did, he’s smarter than Batman and more powerful than Superman, remember? Anyway, Ripper intuits that Sam quit Brell and has had enough. He clarifies forgave her for that, but he did not forgive her for breaking the bed. Yuck, yuck, ha-ha. This naturally leads to playful banter and soon that leads to sexy time, with the two kissing and just as they try to progress, the TV blares an important announcement: Zeus has challenged Ripper, with Zeus on TV screaming it out. And in a nice call back (look, I’ll take what the script can give me), once more Ripper is facing Zeus via TV as he first did when he saw him destroy a fella.

At some high school football field, Ripper plays around with kids, because he loves charities, and the script literally tells us that. The kids are a cheap prop for danger, for Zeus comes on a helicopter, with Brell. Brell calls out Ripper right there on the spot to fight Zeus, but seeing all the scared children, Ripper stands down, because this ain’t the place. Brell immediately calls out Ripper as not being brave or good enough to defeat Zeus, and proclaims Zeus the champion of the world. Hang on, of what? Ripper is a wrestler and that much we know. Zeus is a fighter. Did the script just invent a grand unified grappling and combat arts championship? Because, man, then it is ahead of its time. With the grandstand challenge denied and a championship created out of nothing, Brell and Zeus leave by helicopter. In his (ghostwritten) autobio, Hogan said he was deathly afraid of helicopters. Though that may be another weird tale told by Hogan to appear interesting. If he does have that particular phobia, then did he write this scene to show Ripper at his most vulnerable? All wrestlers are method actors by definition. Perhaps this was Hogan’s way to ensure he would be ready for the scene. Touching really.

In an underground garage of an apartment building, Sam leaves her car and is confronted by a man Ripper beat up by the limo sent by Brell. The goon assaults Sam’s grocery bags and is implied to have designs for her body. She flees and tries to fend him off, but he paws at her clothes tearing them (look, it’s in the script). Then, “the awesome unmistakeable (sic) sound of a Harley-Davidson is heard.” That’s right, Ripper is here.

He uses the bike to scoop up the Rapist with its handlebars, hold on to him by the scruff of his leather jacket and dunks him into an open manhole cover, quipping “Going down.” Because that’s how one deals with rapists. Ripper did more to beat up an armed robber and a man trying to assault him with a lead pipe. Ripper then gets to Sam, and pulls her into his arms. We are left to infer this is Brell trying to settle things, but we never see him give the order. And while the script assures us we recognize the Rapist as one of the thugs who tried to assault Ripper, it was over an hour ago in the film running time, as written, and we only saw the goof get smacked around once or twice, if that, in the space of thirty seconds. A bit of a stretch.

At the high school, Randy bids adieu to his harem and Craig pulls out a poster, inviting the public to come see the world champion Zeus train at his private gym. Randy does not want to go, understandably. Craig eagerly says, “Everybody’s going. There’s no way anything could happen to us. Besides, you should keep an eye on this guy for Ripper.” Randy, meet idiot ball. Idiot ball, let Randy hold you to advance the plot. Let us count the ways this is dumb. First, once again we have made Craig the bad friend, and Randy reluctant, a follow up on the third scene with them, but opposite of the establishing one. Second, everybody is not in fact going. We just saw the harem walk off. We know that the harem and Randy hang out after school and Randy’s house, so we had to chase off the harem to advance this bit of stupidity, and we also contradicted Craig’s assumption. Third, last time Randy and Craig went to see Zeus, they got manhandled, detained and verbally assaulted. Even if Craig is an idiot, Randy is not, so how could he believe “There’s no way anything could happen to us.” Fourth, Ripper is not fighting Zeus, and has no wish to fight him per Ripper’s last actions. So why would young Randolph go see Zeus once more and on behalf of Ripper. It makes no sense. Also, I refuse that scene was written by a professional screenplay writer, because I – an amateur – could easily rewrite this abomination of a scene by two minor tweaks: include the harem, and have the blonde who crossed and uncrossed her legs goad Randy into going because she is too scared to see Zeus up close, but she will know she will be safe with young Randolph around and that’s why he goes along. Also, have Craig be the voice of reason and try to tell he shouldn’t, and rewrite previous scene as Randy going on his own, despite Craig’s advice. And that’s off the top of my head and upon second reading of this script. I know the credited writer of this shlock has only two credits to his name after this film came out, but still, he is a professional and has sold scripts prior. I cannot see him being so out of it as to write that scene as it appears. Here, I believe, are the grubby hands of amateurs.

Back to the plot. At Zeus’s “dark, spartan, basement gym,” a sizeable crowd of impressionable teenagers look on as Zeus works out, near an octagon ring. Brell fields questions from the audience. Orbach whispers into Brell’s ear about Randy and Craig making an appearance, and Brell asks for a volunteer to do some light sparring with Zeus. There are no takers. Zeus, for his part, looks up at Brell with disinterest and focuses on working out. The script has thus far not screwed up Zeus. He is a monster, but a monster of precise motivations and wants. He did not care to talk to executives, or spar with anyone. He’s here to destroy people in the ring. Brell picks out Randy, and all nearby take a step back, except Craig, who now tells Randy not do it. Stupid, stupid script. Randy takes a step forward as Brell goads him about being yellow like his brother… Ripper. This intrigues Zeus, who looks at the kid. The crowd for their part starts chanting “Ripper,” despite coming to see Zeus work out. Traitors. Randy takes off his shirt and leaps into the octagon. Zeus is not amused and gets in the ring. Randy does the five D’s of dodgeball to avoid Zeus, which only makes the fella mad. Zeus finally catches him, drags him into the middle of the ring, makes Randy kneel beneath him. Whoa there, movie. “Zeus puts one hand under Randy’s chin and the other on the top of his head. He starts to twist. Puts over the edge by chanting of the crowd, Zeus grinds Randy’s neck into a grotesque position and looks down in his face. He doesn’t see Randy.” He sees Ripper’s face staring back at him in defiance. “Completely out of his mind, he retwists the neck and snaps it. The grinding sound of crushed vertebrae silences the crowd.” Wow, that escalated quickly.

At Charlie’s gym, Charlie answers the phone and calls for Ripper, it is Craig calling. Outside the gym, a car drives up, screeches to a halt, throws open the back doors and throws out the body of Randy. What? That’s a mob hit. This was a well-publicized workout, and plenty of witnesses saw Randy get beat on by Zeus. Even if we assume some sort of waiver of responsibility was implicit in Randy stepping foot in the ring, and even if we assume authorities do not wish to press criminal charges for what transpired in the ring, because we’re in a place where sports related violence is condoned and ignored, like a hockey rink in Boston during the Canadiens games, then at least what happened afterwards would be criminal and all responsible for the dump would be jailed and sued into oblivion. I understand we live in a universe where a champion wrestler has his own show on TV where he defeats wrestlers on a network and draws boffo ratings for it, and is more famous than everyone else, but still, did the laws change. Are we in an alternate universe?

In the hospital, Ripper is alone at the end of the hallway and talks to himself about how it should have been him and not Randy. The doctor approaches. Randy will live, but he may be paralyzed, or as the doc puts it, “It seems that motor functions on his left side may be severely impaired.” Say, remember how the script mentioned on page two that the Ripper sign (“I Love You” meets “Hang Loose”) is always done by the left hand of the user? You don’t think that will now come into play for young Randolph to let us all know that all will be well by doing that sign, do ya? Inside the hospital room, Ripper talks to a still unconscious Randy, and talks about they will fight this together. In the corner he spots black roses and a card. “Get well soon. Zeus.” Oh snap. It’s on now. Ripper walks into the distance, with Sam trying to get to him, but being held back by Charlie, for a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Ripper goes into Zeus’s gym and tears it apart, as Brell taunts him via a speaker, overseeing the proceedings on the camera. Ripper spots the camera and takes it out with a weight. Brell involuntarily ducks it, but not before agreeing to have Zeus fight Ripper, on Brell’s terms. Before a giant press assemblage, Brell explains that in two weeks, Ripper will face Zeus on Brell’s United Network. In the hospital room, Ripper cares for Randy, in the gym, Zeus trains for his fight by pulverizing cinder blocks with his bare hands. I love me an ’80s training montage.

In his lair, Brell tells all how this fight will make his network number one. However, one man asks him what happens if Ripper wins, and Brell assures him that such a thing will not happen. Eeeevil. In the hospital, as gentle Ripper helps Randy have physical therapy, Zeus keeps doing Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV” stuff. But soon it is time for the day of the fight, at the UTN studio. Brell has his minions arrange something with an elevator for tonight. At the hospital, Randy gets wheeled out in a wheelchair by Ripper, who thinks having Randy in his corner will be really helpful, because screw Randy’s PTSD at having to be around the monster who disabled him, Ripper needs some emotional support brother, brother. Ripper is accompanied by Charlie, Craig, Randy and Sam. Ripper goes to the locker room, with Charlie. Sam, Craig and Randy go to a handicapped ramp, as told by an usher. Ripper preps for his match, with little words of wisdom from a worried Charlie. The handicapped ramp leads to an elevator, and a trap, for after Craig wheels out Randy, hired goons shove Sam back inside, get in with her and ride off. Craig then pushes Randy down a wheelchair “at top speed” to warn Ripper, while the goons drag Sam into Orbach’s office, where Orbach points out a huge closed circuit monitor for her to watch the show and the goons shove Sam into a chair, but do not otherwise restrain her. Hmm. In the office is also Unger, who phones Brell to tell him the elevator is now fixed. Brell is delighted and calls Ripper, who has been appraised by Randy and Craig of the shenanigans. Brell tells Ripper to make it look good for ten minutes and then take a dive, or else “you’ll be pushing twin wheelchairs. Do you hear me?” Brell laughs and hangs up. Ripper tells Charlie he has ten minutes to find Sam, and tells Craig to keep track of Randy and himself at ringside.

End of Act II.

Will Ripper prevail? Will Sam escape an easily escapable situation? Will Randy use his paralyzed left side to give Ripper their special sign to show he is no longer paralyzed? What will happen to Brell and Zeus? All these questions and more shall be answered in the next post. Stay tuned.

No Holds Barred: The Script: Act III

When we last left our hero, he found out his perfunctory love interest has been kidnapped and evil network executive wants him to throw the fight to the evil bad guy champion after ten minutes, else the love interest will be crippled. Our hero sent his trainer to find his perfunctory love interest, while he prepares to meet the bad guy champion in the ring.

The script goes into details describing the setup of the studio where the fight will take place, thus warning the reader the geography of the space will become important for what will transpire next. Brell is in a control room overlooking the octagonal ring (it finally makes its return, despite not being used in the other locations). The Commentator serves as a crappy exposition machine recapping how the fight will work (we just watched like five of them, script). The crowd is nicely dressed, which tells me either the writer watched the Dumont network TV wrestling back in the day or this is Vince trying to class up the joint for his own vision of things that never came. Ripper gets a chant going from the crowd as he enters and the commentator points out that Charlie is not with Ripper and how that is strange. First time I read this, I thought this meant this would alert Brell to be on the lookout for Charlie and send his minions to block him, but nope. It has no bearing on the plot. At all. Next up, Zeus enters the arena, all alone, and the script makes sure to note he has no one because he doesn’t want anyone, like thrice.

Back in Orbach’s office, Orbach and the Goons get ready to watch the fight, with kidnapped Sam seated with them, and we note one of the Goons twirls the key ring. The script assures us that there is no escape for Sam. Erm, there is actually plenty, but okay. We are setting improbable odds to overcome. Probable odds would read badly, I suppose. In the ring, Ripper and Zeus have a shoving match and then a fight. This was allegedly the masterpiece of Hogan’s fevered dream. And I can see Hogan’s fingerprints on it, kinda. Per Hogan ghostwritten autobiography, Hogan rewrote the fight sequence on “Rocky III” due to the fight choreographer not getting wrestling. That’s a tall tale as well, but Hogan did have experience with movie-fighting prior to this film, and the Zeus-Ripper fight follows a kind of a Hogan-Big Monster Bad Guy template, but very slowed down. As Ripper and Zeus do battle, Orbach and his goons are distracted, and Sam is able to escape, though there are a couple of false scares. The Goons and Orbach realize Sam is gone just as she escapes the office, with them giving chase. But oh noes, as Ripper looks out into the audience, he only sees Randy and Craig, and not Sam or Charlie and he begins to lose hope as the Commentator tells us that the non-stop action has been going on for ten minutes. Meanwhile, Sam has a stairwell chase scene with guards. Just as they corner her, Charlie drives a forklift into the lot of them and pins them to a wall, and off Charlie and Sam race to get to the studio where the match is being televised. Somehow, during the midst of all this, no one had the heart, guts or time to call Brell, and he keeps gloating up in the control booth overlooking the eight sided ring. Zeus is beating on Ripper, but just then Charlie and Sam enter the studio and Ripper sees her and fights back, just as Brell spots her as well and starts pounding on his control console before him, sending sparks flying and Techs skittering out of the room.

Zeus fights back from Ripper’s assault, rips out one of the eight posts encircling the ring and uses it as a sword to try to skewer Ripper. This was specifically referenced in Hogan’s book by the way. Ripper evades the post, and Zeus nearly destroys the ring with his penetration of it with the ring post. The corners of the ring start to collapse, just like legs of the bed upon which Ripper and Sam spent the night. In the midst of all this mess, Zeus grabs Ripper in the same neck crank hold he used to cripple young Randolph. Sam yells at the Ref to do something. The Ref enters the ring, because I suppose Zeus is trying to kill Ripper, and Zeus backhands him into oblivion and “snarls with delight and torques Ripper’s neck with all his strength.” Ripper falls on the canvas, convulsing. This convulsion will be instant familiar to any wrestling fan, because that’s the exact same flop Hogan would do in WCW when facing no-good giants and Yetis and etc.

With Ripper downed, Zeus keeps stomping on him, but out of the corner of his eye, Ripper sees young Randolph marshal his strength and… move his left hand’s little finger… just slightly, but that is enough. “Randy looks up at Ripper. Ripper is looking right at him. Ripper has seen. Ripper gets that look in his eye.” Ripper mounts a comeback for the ages and beats on Zeus, who flees from the resurgent champion of all that is good and decent. Zeus resorts to throwing people Ripper’s way as he stumbles up and somehow goes towards up to Brell’s control room, or rather the scaffolding from in front of it. Brell is bug eyed and angry, but wounded Zeus still is able to hold off Ripper until Ripper hits him with the bomber-move and Zeus falls off the scaffolding twenty feet in the air and lands in the middle of the ring that collapses and the impact rocks the entire building. Oh, and the crowd chants Ripper’s name. Because, yay, murder!

Brell is all alone in the control booth and going stark raving mad, destroying electronic equipment as Ripper (“his chest heaving”) goes after him. Brell backs up into an electronic panel and “his left hand reaches out and inadvertently grabs onto a sparking high-amperage electrical wire. His body shudders and convulses, his hand unable to let go.” The monitors explode (?) and the panel sparks some more as Brell is killed by voltage and “Ripper witnesses this with no remorse. Poetic justice.” A man killing himself with electricity is poetic justice for rape, assault, attempted murder and manslaughter? Okay, script, if you say so. In the studio, Ripper turns to face the crowd, who are on their feet and roar “in fanatic adulation and chant his name.” He just killed one man and caused the death of another. They are cheering two deaths of people they barely knew because the guy who killed them was a wrestling fella they were fond of. What is wrong with these people? What is wrong with this in-film universe?

Ripper returns from his murderous tour de force performance to mingle with the people, getting to Randy and Craig and Charlie and Sam. He hoists Randy on his shoulder and Randy now, and only now, little by little, with the cheers of the crowd gives the Ripper hand sign with his left hand as the film ends. Wowzers. It wasn’t Randy that inspired Ripper. Nope. Well, okay, I mean a little, with his finger and trying. Trying, not succeeding, by the way. He just tried. Then, it was actually Ripper by winning who inspired Randy to not be paralyzed any more. Wowzers. Hulk Hogan matches can cure paralysis, folks. It’s a fact. The script said so. Wowzers once more. The film saved its best Ripper magic for last.

No Holds Barred: The Script: The Discussion

Act I was awful, but entertaining. Act II is where things really went off the rails, but the first half of it wasn’t that horrific, as opposed to the second half which brought everything to a screeching halt and violated what little rules of this world that seemed to have existed. Act III was paint by numbers but a lot of paint was eaten before it could be applied. A lot was spent on the fight to make it look and sound interesting in the script, but in my recap with you I limned it because it wasn’t that creative or built up on anything. It wasn’t like Ripper went into the match with busted ribs and we saw Zeus focus on that the entire match. Neither was there a bum knee. Ripper is nigh invulnerable, and boring. We never felt he was in jeopardy because he was only getting beat on for ten minutes before being asked to take a dive. It was never clear if taking a dive would mean Zeus would kill him afterwards because Zeus does not care or even if Zeus knew of the arrangement Brell had (probably not, given how Brell wants to manipulate him). So the worst thing that could have happened to the character is that he would have lost, on TV. The horror!

Also, given the description of Ripper’s axe-bomber finisher, which is Hulk Hogan’s NJPW finisher but just slightly off (in the script, I mean, in the film it is a whole lot off), and that the script literally refers to Ripper’s 24 inch pythons when he is cradling the baby in the “Ripper is great with babies” scene, this was written specifically for Hogan even if you never heard the Florida hotel room story. This wasn’t a “well, Hell, let’s do a vanity project for some wrestling lunkhead or weightlifting fella,” this was done specifically for Hogan and per Hogan he rewrote it to best fit his needs. What kind of a blithering idiot thinks people want to see Hulk Hogan fix printers in a Hulk Hogan movie about Hulk Hogan being a wrestling champion? If you’re a kid, and you came to see Hulk Hogan fight you get two wrestling matches only: one to start the film and one to finish the film, ninety minutes apart. And in the middle, Hulk Hogan whomps on four mooks in a warehouse, makes a driver shit his pants and throws a rapist down into the sewer. Compare this to an El Santo or a Blue Demon movie and see just how off the mark the whole thing really looks and feels. Who is the intended audience for this film, as written? The script has no clue. It does its best to alienate Hogan fans by not having Hogan do the things Hogan does and doesn’t do anything to build a new audience, though it thinks it does by having Hogan be a lover and a knower of things. Let’s talk about that last part, because it really makes no sense, from any point of view but sheer and utter vanity.

The biggest problem with Ripper being a spotter of fake furniture, fluent in French and maker of French cuisine, IT expert and baby and babes handler is that none of it means anything and has zero bearing on the plot. Ripper wins the day through sheer brute strength, the same strength he had displayed in the first match in Act I in the first three five minutes on the film. Did Ripper overhear the nefarious plot to bring him down and was able to stymie it due to the plotter being French? Nope. Did he hack the WTN HQ computers and figure out how to shut down Brell? Nope. Did he make an amazing French dish which caused even the small heart of Orbach to grow and confess what Brell is plotting because great food conquers all? Nope. None of it mattered. The script wastes valuable pages to explore what Ripper does because it has no idea what to do with Ripper, and must just mark time until Zeus has been built up sufficiently enough of a threat to him. Act I establishes Brell wants to do Ripper in and cannot because his regular mooks fail. Act II is about Brell honing Zeus as his weapon to destroy Ripper. All well and good, but in the meantime Ripper does nothing relevant to the story or his character. Fixing IBM printers is not a character trait.

Ripper’s “arc” under the most generous of terms is having a brother be potentially paralyzed and gaining a lady love. But since he had women mooning after him all movie and it is implied gals dig him even before the start of the film, the lady love thing is not shattering. Even in Act III, when it seems Ripper is ready to throw the match just to ensure Sam’s safety not once do we feel that Ripper would not do that for say, oh a little kid that Brell kidnapped and threatened to harm. There is nothing special about Sam, as far as the story goes. Although, she has more of an arc than Ripper, as she learns to love. What does Ripper learn? That he can help his little brother overcome paralysis and sickness by murdering people? “What’s that, little brother? You got lupus? Hang on, I’ll beat up a 300 pound ‘roid monster to death before you and you’ll be right as rain.”

As previously stated, this is the vainest of all vanity projects. Now, let us see how the film improved on the script.

Spoiler alert: it totally didn’t.

No Holds Barred: The Casting

The extent of New Line Cinema contribution to the project is a bit murky, given the individuals involved and some rather nasty math which I will describe later, and it seems for all intents and purposes Vince McMahon took it into his head to do an independent movie and then distribute it. This meant that the traditional support structure was not there. It also meant, unless there was a strong veteran producer guiding the whole thing, the picture would either be in the hands of the director or some moneyed fool who was assembling the project. There were no veteran producers on the set. And the director picked was a TV movie man. Now, today, in the age of streaming prestige projects and the fact that there are no more mid-budget feature films in theaters any more (even before Covid), the world of feature film has become a barren wasteland of big blockbusters engineered for maximum audience quadrants and cheap horror films which make back their money because people need(ed) cheap scares and TV has lost a lot of its stigma. But, well into the aughts, there was a clear line of division between film and TV, and actors were warned against getting involved with the small screen. However, I don’t want to smear the director Thomas J. Wright with the brush of a hack, because he is actually a genuine success story. He started as an artist doing paintings that introduced each episode of Rod Sterling’s Night Gallery, and then transitioned to doing storyboards in the world of film where no less a luminary than Alfred Hitchcock liked the cut of jib so much he decided to sponsor him for membership into the Director’s Guild. Sadly, with such a pedigree he still did not get very far, and as we shall soon see this film did not light a fire under him either. For purposes of our tale so far, he is not a man with the power to rein in anyone on the set, leaving power squarely in the hands of Vince McMahon and Hogan. Scanning through the rest of the names present behind the camera one is struck by the underwhelming lot of them. No name jumps out. And that makes sense, because without major studio backing, the agents steering talent to the project would not exactly be lining them up to come, especially with the script we just read making the rounds. This leaves us with a lot of journeymen and never-will-bes, and also brings up a mystery: what was the proposed budget of the film? Variously, at different points of his life, Vince McMahon let it be known to his minions it was $20 million, $6 million or even $1.5 million. In his ghost written first autobiography Hogan stated it was $8 million. The real number is, as I stated prior, a mystery, but I will hazard some guesses based on what we will see and some of the rumors I had heard. Hulk Hogan’s paycheck is likewise a mystery, though a persistent rumor has it Vince McMahon paid him a million to do star in the flick. That number too would enter lore as well as the circumstances under which it was given, but I am getting ahead of myself again.

The question of where to film was settled early – Georgia. The tax credits were nice and the laws were lax, just like how Vince McMahon likes it. The fact that he was filming in the backyard of his long term wrestling enemy and new may have helped as well. With so many things settling into place the time was to cast the talent in front of the camera. For Brell, Kurt Fuller was chosen. The rest were then unknowns, except Sam. Sam was to be played by Joan Severance, a model turned actress, who was dipping her toe into the world of acting. In her terrible, horrible no good, very bad book, Linda Hogan (wife of the Hulk) would claim that Joan and Hulk had an affair on the set. Her evidence was that she was getting bad vibes from Joan when she visited the set and she noted that Joan was very pale. If you had read Linda’s book – and please don’t – you would know that Linda associates paleness with evil. No, I am not kidding. Linda associates tanning with healthiness and goodness, and if someone is pale, she does not much care for them. Don’t look at me like that. It’s in her stupid book. For Joan Severance, this would be her second feature film. I know IMDB lists several credits prior to “No Holds Barred,” but please recall IMDB lists projects by their release date, not their filming date. NHB was made prior to the rest of the ’88 and ’89 projects of Severance. Her only role prior to this film was a bit part in “Lethal Weapon,” when the then reigning and undisputed king of action flicks producer Joel Silver discovered her in a bar and gave her his card and told her she should be in the movies. Severance once gave an interview where when asked about her work experience, she answered, “babysitter, model, supermodel, then actress.” It’s a good line, but it also means in those Sam-Rip scenes, it is actually Hogan who is the veteran actor.

For the flashy and would-be memorable role of Neanderthal, the king of roughnecks at Spike’s bar, Hogan approached Stan Hansen, a fellow wrestler. Hansen and Hogan had worked together years and years, in various federations, including the old WWWF, and then in New Japan, where Hansen’s cowboy act got over with the audience. Hansen and Hogan teamed several times as well, and got along. At the time of the filming, Hansen was in AJPW. It is likely Hogan offered the position as a favor, because it would allow Hansen a chance to get health insurance via the Screen Actors’ Guild. Wrestlers were and are classified as independent contractors, remember? Hansen had always insisted on carrying health insurance, no matter the cost, since the early days of his career, to fix all sorts of injuries a wrestler may obtain in the course of his every day work. When he found out that the Guild would carry him on their insurance for up to three years if he did the feature film, Hansen was all-in. Rounding out the cast were his fellow wrestlers and WWF talent, who may or may not have been compensated for additional work on the film to supplement their WWF pay. Only one role remained to be filled – Zeus.

As casting began, McMahon and Hulk auditioned many. Well, so Hulk says. Then one actor stepped in. He was heavily muscled and had a shaved head. He had taken the trouble to use a marker to write Zs into the side of his head, and put electrical tape around his wrists to simulate wrist tape. Aware that Hulk Hogan was a shoot 6’5″ (though billed taller), the 6’4″ actor decided to wear lifts in his boots to appear larger than Hulk and therefore be more imposing as Zeus. A man who knew how to pump iron, the actor also made sure to do a 100 pushups in either the parking lot prior to going into the audition room and also slathered his chest with baby oil to let his muscles glisten. When he came in, he had one more card to play: he was born blind in one eye and the effect of on it has face gave him a striking look. He came in and hissed his lines and per the actor, Vince McMahon turned to Hogan and said, “That’s Zeus.” The actor’s name was Tommy “Tiny” Lister Jr. A loner by temperament with a hatred for male authority figures, Lister hated coaches and teammates alike. He also had an outsized homophobia, going so far as to speak about being revolted about touching men in any context. But with his powerful frame, sports were an easy outlet into higher education. He chose shotput and set records for his school. Middling through life he fell into acting. And he came in and took the role. A good tale, but also one that omits things. Such as Lister had an agent, and it was the same agent Hogan used. And it was said agent who sent Lister to the audition. It would be impossible for Hogan to not know of such things prior to Lister walking through the door. For his part, Lister also omits the detail. Upon seeing their new Zeus, who bulked up for the audition by getting to 285 pounds, Vince had only one ask: take three months to prepare for the role. Somehow Lister immediately what that meant, for when he showed up to shoot he was 305 pounds and all his gains were pure muscle.

Next up, we will dive into the film itself.

No Holds Barred: The Film: Act I

As in the script, the film makes sure the first image we see is that of our hero, but unlike the script there is now a voice-over of two announcers, bickering, and discussing how this is special when one Jake Bullet will challenge the World Wrestling Federation champion for the belt. The two announcers are easily identifiable as “Mean Gene” Okerlund and Jesse “The Body” Ventura, and we are already in a bit of a weird territory. In the script, the champion is not that of the WWF. Neither are the announcers identified. By introducing Ventura and Okerlund as themselves and setting the film in the universe where WWF exists we are confusing things. Rather than set in a fictional movie universe where WWF is wholly absent, we are now in an alternate universe where Hulk Hogan does not exist, but everything else associated with him does. Adding to the weird feel are the colors of the hero. Instead of Hogan’s red and yellow, Ripper is in blue and white. So… there is a Hulk but he is not Hulk, but he is played by Hulk but nearly everything else is the same. And all this in the first two minutes of the film.

As for the first shot of our hero, it is him, silhouetted by white light, shaking his face and something falling off his jowls. It looks like drool. And that is not a pleasant thing to first see when we meet our hero. It is actually meant to be water. For in the script, if you recall, there was an entire ritual of cross and hands intertwined, and we were left to infer this is what Ripper does before every big match. Including the scoop of water from basin into the face. Well, all of that is now gone, including the basin and the water in it and instead we just get Hulk Hogan appear to be slobbering. Not a great look.

One other twist in the film is that Ripper is no more. He is now simply Rip. And while IMDB indicates he is Rip Thomas, I can assure you that not once will anyone in the film mention his last name. He is just known by his first name, as he was in the March script, but now that name has been shortened. This makes for an easier chant of the crowd – “Rip” as opposed to the two syllable “Rip-per,” but otherwise seems a bit goofy. I guess it meant something to someone, perhaps Vince? But when Rip enters the arena he encourages a two syllable chant of “Rip ‘Em” thus nullifying the whole thing. Oh well.

Rip walks into the arena and fans react. The fans are excited to see Rip, and they are pressed to the guard rails of the narrow aisle of the arena a bit too closely than WWF would allow in real life. Hmm. Either this was filmed at a regular WWF wrestling show after wrestling matches and extras were told to crowd the aisle, or they are crowding because we are in a tiny arena and they are preventing us from seeing how small it really is. Right now I am favoring the second option, because there is some really weird spatial configuration with the fans’ placement. That kind of voodoo is more typically done to hide a small crowd.

Awkwardly dubbed lines alert us that Randy and Ripper are brothers and they have grown closer since the passing of their parents. Wait, what? Apparently someone read the script and decided that folks might want to know where Randy’s dad and mom are after he had been crippled and decided that they had to explain it. That one just reads like a weird note from a producer, where instead of focusing on how the entire film makes not a whole lot of sense they concentrate their brain power on trying to make sure everyone understands what happened to the one minor potential plot gap that no one cares about. Good job, film. You explained one of the questions I never bothered to ask.

The film cuts to Ventura and Okerlund at ringside (not really, but the insert of them imposed over a cheering crowd is not as awkward as it could have been), as both men do their best to build up the challenger to WWF Champion Rip – Jake Bullet, played by an embarrassed to be here Bill Eadie. Eadie was asked to come up with a new character to portray Jake Bullet and buy his own gear for it. He kept the Demolition black trunks and changed his appearance thusly: mascara and lots of it, feathering his hair up. Even with Ventura and Okerlund telling us how much of a great challenger he is to Rip, he does not appear to pose much of a threat to our hero. As Rip walks into the ring, he rips off his T-shirt, further confusing the Hogan-Rip dynamic in the heads of little kids everywhere. And as he does, I pause the film and spot all those empty seats. Ouch, that’s a big no-no in WWF world. These are not WWF cameramen then. Also, I count less than twenty rows from ringside to the top of the curtains here and the layout seems to be mid ’80s multi-purpose mid-major arena in the Midwest. Hmm. IMDB says this film was partially shot in Topeka, Kansas, and I think the Landon Arena would fit.

Suddenly the camera pulls back to take in the ring diagonally from ten rows back, and the lighting completely changes. There were painfully obviously two shoots done at different times and the footage was awkwardly spliced. These are simple things to do and hard to screw up. The technical failures of this film are present before the opening credits stopped rolling. Bullet and Rip wrestle a bit with Bullet suddenly gaining advantage and going for a pin early only for Rip to kick out. The crowd is meant to boo, but no one clued them in, or the sound did not travel well with only a few hundred extras in an arena seating 5,000, so they had sweeten the audio so it sounds like we get a chorus of boos. Rip’s trainer Charlie reacts to the champ nearly losing by raising his hands and covering his head and “acting” concerned, and it’s bad acting, and that is terrible. The actor playing Charlie is not being asked here to dig deep into the well of pain of his soul and react to a scene of horror, he has to act concerned his protégé is going to lose. That’s not a hard emotion to display. Not to be outdone, Rip’s brother Randy also acts as if he saw a burger on sale after he already ate one. The actor portraying Randy was 24 years young at the time of filming, but looks only slightly younger. If I had not read the script, I would have no idea he is supposed to be 18 here.

Cut to Brell watching the bout on TV in… well it doesn’t look like a conference room or a nerve center of anything. It looks like an executive lounge. There are no desks, only leather chairs cluttered in the middle of the small room, with three leather armchairs abutting the wall. As in the script, Brell thinks the competition might self-destruct here. In the ring, Bullet has locked in a sleeper hold and Okerlund assures us that Bullet is moments away from winning, a shot of Bullet having the hold on cinched tight is framed by empty seats. Man, did anyone not watch the dailies and say, “guys we need to have everyone on one side and then we can film everything facing one side.” This is some lazy work by the folks behind the lens. As Bullet applies the pressure, Randy shoots the left-handed “Rip ‘Em” sign at the fast fading Rip. Rip looks down at his own left hand does the “Rip ‘Em” sign to himself and breaks Bullet’s hold and turns the tide. The cheering people give him the Rip ‘Em sign, most of them doing it wrongly, and you notice bored kids in yellow T-shirts staring blankly ahead in the same shot. I am guessing those were the wrestling fans who showed up to see Hogan in their red and yellow Hulkamania T-shirts, but were told they had to turn their shirts inside out if they wanted to stay for the shoot. The rest of the extras were gifted black WrestleMania IV “What the world is watching” T-shirts, which fill the arena. Amusingly the man front and center among the fans and screaming the loudest for Rip is a big fella in a red “Shit Happens” trucker hat. Things you would never see on a WWF broadcast, ever. Man, I don’t mean to harp on this, but this movie so far is showing less diligence about camera work and who does what in front of it than a bottom of the barrel wrestling show on TV. Jake Bullet tries to attack Rip, but Rip is not feeling anything at the moment, energized as he is by the fans and he sends Bullet into the ropes and then catches him with a big boot, which is shown from four different angles (all of them showing different lighting, from the different shoots). Then Rip gets ready to hit Bullet with his in-movie finisher, but before he does, he shoots the “Rip ‘Em” sign to the crowd with his left hand… and his right. Whoa there, movie. What are you doing? Have we forsaken the “always left” thing? Does that mean the paralysis is now not going to be in the movie? Or are we coming up with a different sign. Also, it appears Bullet’s trunks are now dark blue. I can’t tell if it is due to lighting or if he wore two different outfits for two different (at least) shoots, but suspect it is lighting because Bill Eadie was a stickler for making things look professional. Rip hits Bullet with his bomber and pins him. Ventura says he can’t believe Rip did it again and talks about the place going crazy and pandemonium.

Back at Brell’s evil lounge, Brell repeats Ventura’s lines in anger and throws his remote at the corner plant. A pan back shows he was not in fact watching one TV but seven, with the wrestling bout on the main screen and four smaller ones flanking it on the right and two on the left. Hang on, the whole point of having different screens was that Brell could compare and monitor things on different networks. What is the point of showing the same thing on all seven monitors? Incensed, Brell throws his remote at a fichus plant and that causes all the monitors to turn to static. That seems weird, and that’s not how remotes work. Brell stands and glowers about the room of seated executives. Brell stalks the lounge, talking about being last in the ratings. Brell turns to face the executives and demands “I want that jock-ass on this network!” And thus the term “jock-ass” enters pro-wrestling lore. Who came up with it? I know not. But it is one of three or four things for which this film is known, and not seeing it in the March draft of the script confused me. Perhaps one day someone will find out who decided to use that bizarre term of abuse in the film. Was it perhaps meant to be a one-time line and said as two words “jock” and “ass” in reference to Rip being both an ass and a jock as far as Brell was concerned, and Kurt Fuller (chewing the scenery without even asking for any condiments) just said it as one word and all laughed and decided to roll with it? I fear I have not the answer. One person who read my treatment of this film flubbed the line “jackass” or perhaps it was in the script and was a typo and all had a great time? Once more, I have no good answers, only questions.

Brell wants his execs to come up with some answers and stalks off. In the ring, Howard Finkel announces the WWF champion Rip and Rip calls for Charlie and Randy to join him. Randy leaps into his arms and Rip catches him one armed, then sets him down and Randy shoots the crowd the “Rip ‘Em” sign… with both hands. Okay, so that concept is now truly dead. A shame. I rather liked how it was setup in the script. As Rip celebrates, Charlie holds up Rip’s belt and it is the Winged Eagle WWF world championship design which debuted in 1988. The original belt was on black leather and here it is on white. Charlie holds up the belt like a man who has never held a championship belt before in his entire life, letting straps fall and twisting the left plate up and to the side. Oh Charlie.

Cut to a TV truck driving up to a corporate glass tower, with the logo of the “World Television Network” on its side. Followed by a cut to inside the board room of Brell, who is ready to hear proposals of his executives. Whoa there, we lost the entire Randy wrestling in high school scene, and with it Randy’s harem and Rip having to teach young hothead Randy to calm down. And the scene will not pop-up elsewhere in the movie. It is simply gone. Did someone read the script and went, “perhaps teenage girls should not be uncrossing their legs in a Hulk Hogan movie?” If so, then that person gets a prize for trying to bring the film closer to Hogan’s core audience. However, lost with that scene is Randy showing off he can wrestle, which helps explain how he could dodge, duck, dip, drive and dodge away from Zeus until he couldn’t in their Act II confrontation. Hmm. Let’s see where this develops. Also, let us be on the lookout for Randy’s High School Sweethearts. There is a scene where Craig spots Zeus on TV and calls Randy over, and Randy is hanging out with his harem. If that scene exists in the movie, then the removal of Randy and the blonde with the uncrossing legs was done after it was already filmed. If the Sweethearts are gone completely, then it means the removal was done at script level and never filmed in the first place.

Brell talks about how he took over the network a few months ago and wants to take it to the top. That’s a different time period than one given in the script. Also, Brell once more calls Rip “jock-ass,” so Vince was all-in on that line. Brell talks about how each time Rip wrestles, his network loses ratings. He scans the executives, who avoid eye contact and settles on Ms. Tidings, who gives a martyred sigh. This scene captures toxic corporate management work environment to perfection. Everyone is so glad they did not get picked on, but at the same time dreads they might get called next. And the new script wins points further, by having Brell saying Tidings had survived his little purge and now he wants her to reward his faith in her. This is much smarter than anything I read in the March draft, and handles exposition better. No way had Hogan or McMahon written these lines. Tidings stands, braces and talks about a high-concept sitcom, and gets summarily dismissed by Brell. I see we have changed the Ted Turner “colorize black and white films” jibe to something more neutral.

Brell circles the board room and as executives literally duck their heads to avoid eye contact completely. Brell stops before one executive, who braces, but Brell turns around and points his finger at Ordway (changed from Orbach, because I can just see some producer having a moment and saying that would be a better name) and asks, “What about you, Ordway?” Ordway stands and drowning asks, not tells, “Could you see another prime-time game show? They sell?” Notable in this shot is the shirt of the character Ordway near his belt – it is bunched up, badly, because the actor filmed the scene of standing up to talk to Brell repeatedly in multiple takes and his shirt got wrinkled as a result and no one on set gave a shit, because they had more scenes to film. What we are seeing here and what we will continue to see is very illustrative of a TV vs. feature film ethos in 1988, and why those involved in films looked down upon TV production, from which most of the behind the camera folk responsible for this fine film came from. In a feature film, you do the scene until you get it right, so you set it up to be perfect, because you have time. In a TV production, you got two weeks, if that, to bang through 47 minutes of material (at most), and since folks will see it on a tiny screen of their TVs, just get rolling already, we got more episodes to put in the can. Once again, I am not calling the director a hack, but this is the kind of stuff that you wouldn’t see in a Stallone flick, even at his “Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot” nadir. Going into the production of the film, Vince took the reins, as he wanted to control Hogan and to also show folks he can make a film. Well, Vince knows nothing about film making. He may think he is making movies in WWF, but he’s not. Certainly not in 1988. And he does not understand the finer point of film production or the politics of Hollywood. He went in like a bull in a china shop and scared off major studios, saying he will front the money and then sell a finished product. So we have an independent film, with a first time producer, a novice director from the world of TV and Hogan, fresh off one bit part in a film prior and nothing else. The blind are leading the blind here. But let’s not make a mountain out of a wrinkled shirt. There is more goofy stuff later.

Brell mocks the “sell” line and flings open the poster on the table, it is that of Hulk Hogan, made up to look like Ripper, but it is 100% a Hogan poster. Brell demands his execs go out and get Ripper, and the scene plays out as it did in the March script. Brell breaks the geode and demands Rip be bought for him. Cut to Rip arriving at some cookie cutter corporate center in a limo. Because Rip is a nice fella, he thanks the limo driver for giving him a lift. Rip here rocks his business wear attire: a red and black spandex muscle T- with a red weight belt, black pants and a black doo rag, making poor WWF fans think they are in a Mirror Universe once more. It is that jarring.

The cookie cutter corporate center turns out to be WTN headquarters, as apparently Rip is already here to talk to Brell. We are making the pacing feel a bit snappier here so far so I am not complaining, just pointing out the differences from the script. In the script, we first meet Sam and then have a Brell-Rip meeting. Here the order is reversed. Brell is with Ordway and Unger (the latter as not yet named by the film) and he meets Rip and shakes his hand. When an excited Ordway goes to shake Rip’s hand next, Brell steps and puts his second hand on Rip’s arm to power shake once more, cutting off Ordway and waving him off. A disappointed Ordway slinks off, showing how much he wanted to meet the champ. That’s actually a neat little moment, and though played broad I enjoyed it. Also, that is not in the script, nor would it have been, so this is the director having a bit of fun and letting Kurt Fuller and “Ordway” Charles Levin have something to do on the set. As Brell kisses Rip’s ass, Hogan tilts his head to the side and raises an eyebrow to show he is above such foolishness. This is an old trick used by terrible actors to appear that they are acting. Before Chris Rock figured out how to act, he used to do it in his films all the time, usually followed by an attempt at a disarming smile.

Brell leads Rip to a priceless chair: “You like the chair? Crafted for men of great stature. Louis XIV. Cost me a fortune.” Ripper sits down in it and it creaks, and I eagerly wait for furniture expert Ripper to educate us it is a Louis XV and that it is a fake. And I wait. And wait. And am left waiting. It never comes. The whole idea of Rip being a furniture expert is excised from the film. Well now, did we dial down the vanity, or did Hulk Hogan think knowing furniture would make him appear less manly? Either way, Rip no longer recognizes fake antiques by a mere glance. A word about the room where Brell makes his pitch. The set design and decorations all speak to a Chinese motif, but the furniture is French, either showing Brell is a doof with no understanding of how things should flow and buys everything or this is actually someone’s office and they went with it, or the set decorator and the script supervisor were not on the same page, or nobody bothered to adjust the lines once they had the set. I lean to the latter two scenarios.

Speaking of scenarios, the rest of the scene plays out exactly as it did in the March draft, including Rip stuffing the check down Brell’s mouth. This actually caused a situation on the set, because Hogan not up on the whole “acting” thing, literally crumpled up the check and shoved it down Kurt Fuller’s mouth, causing him to choke and the director to yell “Cut.” A stunned Hogan was then told that he should not have done that, as this is the movie world and one does not literally shove something a man’s throat and cause him to choke. An apologetic Hogan talked to Fuller afterwards, who laughed the whole thing off.

As Rip walks off, he turns at Ordway, Unger and Brell and growls and does a “Rip ‘Em” sign. This brings up a motif that the script had for a bit and the movie really indulges, Hulk Hogan making animals sounds and growling and breathing hard. In the script, it happened three-four times. In the film, it is closer to four dozen. In fact, in certain parts of dialogue, Hogan will just start making noises to signal emotion. It is… curious.

Brell calls the garage and I glance at the clock. We are about 13 minutes in. The wrestling match ended five minutes into the film. That means we are setting up the confrontation with the four goons and the limo driver to happen at the 15 mark or so. This makes sense. In a popcorn flick, the rule is that you must have something action-oriented happen every ten minutes or your audience gets bored. A still annoyed Rip fumes in the backseat of the limo as a new and evil limo driver (mirrored shades) drives him off. They pass a sign that says Paces Ferry Rd SE and I think I know where they filmed the WTN headquarters – 2410 Paces Ferry Road. That pointless bit of trivia out of the way, Rip notices the limo going the wrong way, the limo driver ignores him and blocks off Rip and locks in the doors and seals off the partitions. Rip starts banging on the partitions and the sheer force of his blows make the limo swerve wildly. Uh, okay. So we lost the bit where Rip knows antique furniture, but he seemed to have gained more physical prowess and growls like an animal. I am not sure that is a good trade off from the dumb Act I read in the March draft, movie. Rip beats on the car from inside and this causes dents on the outside, because, ya know, Rip, and also because the poor limo now hits trash cans, buildings, other cars and yet keeps on ticking, as the evil limo driver keeps driving. Ripper keeps smacking the car some more and that makes the limo driver hit a security guard booth made entire out of particle board that collapses into jigsaw puzzles pieces of wood, because that’s exactly how physics work. The cars hit and threatened by the limo are all late ’70s Fords, but the evil limo itself is a stretched Caddy and is at least from the early ’80s, though it may be a custom job since the trunk is not really Caddy like and leans more towards a Lincoln.

The bouncing limo arrives at its final destination – the abandoned warehouse district, which exists in every movie town. There three thugs await. In the script there four. Each one wears different type of clothing that is very visually distinct: there is blazer fella, cheap leather jacket and what may or may not be a cardigan. The camera does quick cuts so we do not see what weapons they exactly have. As they surround the vehicle, Rip growls (oh movie) and looks about and spots the paneled roof of the limo. He then explodes out of it like the Incredible Hulk as really strange jaunty song starts to play on the soundtrack. Rip growls at the men some more and starts beating on them, one by one, as they patiently wait to get their turn. A minute into the fight I realize there were in fact four, the camera cuts just obscured him. The action is absolutely pedestrian and lazily shot. Part of the problem is that Rip is nigh invulnerable and we just saw him torpedo through the metal and glass roof of the limo with no ill effects. At one point in the fight, one of the goons smashes a pipe into Rip’s back and he falls belly first into a “grease stain” on the garage floor (literally hitting the mark designated for him to assist in the fight choreography) and he just sort emits a “whoa” the way you would after downing a soda drink that was not as fizzy as you expected, and pops right up. And when I say he gets hit by a pipe, I mean he gets walloped by a pipe the size of a Scottish Claymore, and it does nothing to slow him down. It is hard to have any feeling of jeopardy and the happy little song does not help. It means the fight is meant to be taken like a goofy little thing and we are meant to ooh and aah as it transpires, but nothing much transpires, so without the drama or the giddy fun, we are just marking time as Rip growls, “whoas” and hits people. At one point, one of the goons punches Rip right in the faces and Rip flares his nostrils, growls, bugs out his eyes and wails on him a bit. I am not entertained.

Then, chuckling to himself all the while, Rip stalks the driver, who is pinned down by the bodies Rip has thrown into the car. Rip drags the driver out of the car, while making faces and noises that are between Popeye the Sailor Man and Curly from the Three Stooges, while also growling. The driver makes yelping sounds and we cut to the seat of his pants which are stained brown and are leaking, not as if he has in fact crapped his pants, but as if he sat in a giant pan full of motor oil for three minutes and only then stood up. In the script, this scene was goofy, in the film this scene is memorably bizarre and became the film’s calling card. It is the one piece of dialogue all who have seen the film recall instantly even years later when discussing the film. I am of course talking about the one and the only “Dukey” scene.

Ripper growls some more and then flaring his nostrils does a “Fee-fie-foe-fum” look about, his eyes threatening to pop out of his sockets and demands to know what is that smell. The driver ekes out, “Dukey” and unlike the script, here Rip growls out, “Dukey?” in return and end scene.

In another glass tower that looks just like all others, some suit tells Rip that he is getting a new account executive – Sam. Rip, wearing the same black and red as he did in the limo scene meets Sam, who is get this – a girl! – and she is named Samantha N. Moore. Oh movie. Your love of stupid names is almost endearing. Rip gets completely tongue tied at the appearance of a hot girl and turns to the suits asks, “Sam?” to which they chuckle. Rip is having to deal with the fact that ladies can do business as well. Left unsaid is the implication that had the account exec been named Jessica, poor ole’ Rip would have been forewarned that he will be dealing with someone who in fact has breasts and learn how to brace himself for such a development. And awkward lighting has returned. When Joan Severance, the actress portraying Samantha N. Moore, stands stock still, the camera seems to capture her okay, about half the time, but when she moves about, the camera seems to have trouble capturing her in the same fashion as when she stood still. As Sam tells all to be seated and talks marketing, all read the brief she prepared except Rip, who stares after her and exhales softly. Now, in Rip’s defense, Joan Severance is very, very, very attractive woman, and is a former supermodel. But still, Rip is acting like an eight year old boy who just realized he likes the way Suzy two desks over looks like, only somehow he is less mature about it. As Sam walks about and the lighting stays flat and TV like, Rip continues to check her out and actually at one point looks her up and down and nods to himself. Oh Rip. Also, having cut out the scene of Rip meeting Liz the lovelorn receptionist, we have not established that ladies did Rip. Now, in the March draft of the script, the progression was: first we establish Rip is in fact a sex symbol and the object of unrequited lust from at least some of the women who meet him, and then we establish Rip also has feelings for girls. Here, without Liz, Rip is just a horny fella who is smitten at the first attractive woman the film introduces. This undermines Rip as a character. Instead of showing him as immune to affections of some ladies and noticing only Sam, to show how even Sam can make Rip sweat, we see Rip fall apart right away. The script built up Rip as something more than just a fighter, and went overboard with it. The film is intent on making Rip a superhuman brawler, but seems to be dialing down all the other crazy delicious touches that I hate-loved in the script. Back to horny Rip staring creepily at Sam.

As Sam talks about how much she wants to change and do with Rip’s character and business interests, she cottons on that Rip is staring (she’d have to be blind not to notice that) and calls him out what he thinks of her proposal thinking he has ignored all of it, and he kinda has, because his redirect is to merely point out that he likes charity and that is his chief outside interest, so her proposal needs to include that. This leads to a cut away to the nameless suits nodding their heads sagely and Sam being defensive, but not as defensive as she gets when Rip says he does not mean to be rude but he has somewhere he needs to be and can they discuss this later. Switching to offense, Sam tells him she will pick him up at eight, for dinner. At this point, Rip’s jaw wobbles to sell shock. Oh man, this is bad acting. Mouth still open, Rip is told the place will be “dressy” as Sam cracks the whip and takes charge.

Let’s call it an Act I here, though it really isn’t.

Given the clothes, the reference by Rip to having a meeting, and the March draft, it is clear that the Sam-Rip meeting scene was meant to take place before the Brell meeting. But someone decided the cutaway from a man shitting his pants in fear of Hogan to a French restaurant with Rip and Sam having a date might be better served by instead having Sam set a date with Rip and then cutting to that date, and moving up the pants shitting up one sequence. The pacing is slightly better as a result, and I did point out when reviewing the script just how odd the cutaway from Dukey to French cuisine, so let’s call it a win. Overall, however, the film is still awkward, as the gains are mostly offset by the new set of losses. I liked that it was not Ripper suggesting he and Sam talk about this after hours in a casual place, but instead Sam was the aggressor – because A) her motivation is ostensibly to teach this lunkhead the finer points of her marketing plan, and B) if Sam is still a mole for Brell, then of course she would take charge and try to get Rip to be closer to her quickly so as to learn things from him to sell back to Brell. As noted earlier, I also think the elimination of a high school girl uncrossing her legs was an improvement, though at the cost of removing a scene showing us Randy can wrestle. But the limo scene was somehow worse on film than in print, and went on far longer, including the pants shitting being extended. Rip’s animal growling and weird noises help no one, and I really cannot emphasize enough how much of a weird feel it would have been for Hogan fans to see the Mirror Universe where Rip is almost Hogan. The film cannot decide the difference between Hogan and Rip besides saddling him with a trainer and a brother, making the existence of Rip as a character separate from Hogan largely pointless. In the script, Rip was Hogan with the serial numbers filed off. In the film, Rip is Hogan with the serial numbers still visible. Still, we’re early on in the film and we setup some stuff that could be fun to resolve.

No Holds Barred: The Film: Act II

We see a large stained glass window of Christ and a woman playing a harp below it in evening wear. Erm, okay. She sits behind a balustrade a floor above an open hall filled with tables full of people eating indoors, and none are six feet apart. To quote one of the Four Yorkshiremen: “Luxury!” Everyone is attired in good ’80s evening wear, with men in solid black suits and ladies in more evening gowns ranging from blue to light brown, when in comes Sam and Rip. Sam wears a black gown, her hair perfectly coiffed by late ’80s standards, and ole’ Rip rocking a white sports jacket with matching pants, vest, and a shirt, unbuttoned to just about his navel and no tie. He also sports no doo rag, allowing his fine silky blonde hair (or what little of it remains) frame his face and head. People stare. The snooty waiter lovingly places the menu into the hands of Sam, shoot a “Sacre bleu” look to Rip and tosses the menu in his direction. Imagine Mr. Bean playing a snooty French waiter, after receiving a massive head injury and medicating himself with bottom shelf vodka, and you will picture the waiter.

Sam says she hopes Rip will find something on the menu he will like, as the waiter regales her with the choices. The young fella who pours ice water spots Rip, smiles broadly and goes towards him as the waiter waxes poetic about the special of the day. Seeing the smiling young fella standing there with a bucket of ice water, the waiter makes a disgusted face and makes hissing sounds and waves his hand at him to disappear, the young man departs, smiling all the while at Rip, who is not pleased by this display. And we now know that Rip must hand this waiter his comeuppance. Then, because we are all stupid and need to really sell the waiter is an ass, he keeps talking to Sam in French as Rip shakes his head. The waiter stops and condescendingly explains what quiche is to Rip and then Sam starts to guess what Rip would like, since he is not the quiche type to her. Okay, now I want Sam to get her comeuppance. Rip keeps shaking his head. I suppose this is a good time as any to talk about Hulk Hogan’s acting – it’s bad.

Pro-wrestling is foremost live theater, but here, divorced from the instant feedback of a live crowd, before the unforgiving harsh glare of overhead lights and an even less forgiving camera, with no audience save a director and the people clustering behind the camera to wait for the scene to be done, Hogan is exposed. He is not a classically trained thespian. He is not someone who has had a lot of film acting experience. He is at the mercy of the script, the director and his co-star. The script is, as we have seen, garbage. The director is a novice. And his co-stars are rookies. It’s a bit of a mess.

The Snooty French Waiter tells Rip that he will not find a hamburger on the menu, which is a reversal of the script, where the Waiter said perhaps Ripper would prefer it. Rip stares down the Waiter, while in the back we see the Ice Water Boy bring out an excited French Chef, who has the kitchen staff with him. The Chef tells Antoinne (the Waiter) that he should have told him that Monsieur Rip was here, and then apologizes to Rip for Antoinne, saying he is new. Antoinne does a terrible attempt at a slow burn, snaps back the ends of his bow-tie (what?), pulls a face and departs. Huh? The Chef, his hat off, for one does not wear a hat in the presence of a king, addresses Rip and asks him if he wants the usual, to which Rip responds in two sentences, in French. Notable, the first and a half sentences are stated off camera with only the Chef’s face in the frame. I wonder how many takes they took with Hogan, before they just told him he could dub it later and asked him to hit the one part he could hit in the prior takes. The Chef snaps his fingers and departs, and Rip shoots Sam a look. End scene.

The Hell was that? The scene of Rip being a French chef has been cut and I won’t miss it, but what we have is not an improvement, except the crazy was dialed down. Someone made the call that only Rip should not be an antique furniture expert, but also not a French chef. Given Hogan’s ego, I wonder who told him to dial it down a notch. Also, the French waiter is still French in the film, as opposed to be being exposed as a fake Frenchman in the script. And his comeuppance is him being told off by the Chef and him rolling his eyes and walking off? Come on. In the script, the snooty waiter is utterly embarrassed and then has to follow Rip as Rip wheels in the four meal course. Here he makes a face and goes off.

Smash cut to two men headbutting each other in the ring in Spike’s Bar. Ah, okay, so that’s why the script called them Headbangers. Now it makes sense. We pan back to take in the bar, and it is a dive bar, as understood by middle class suburbanites in ’88: everyone is white, has tattoos, wears denim and country western music plays in the jukebox, as beer is handed out. The ring itself is in the middle of the bar and is roped off, with barn posts covered in tires acting as turnbuckles. Brell takes Ordway and Unger down a staircase to the bar, which is now a basement dive and it appears Ordway is nauseous, while Brell says, “My sources tell me this could be the start of something big. And I like big ideas.” They pass two men in denim vests and no shirts, who mock bid them a good evening and tell them they are lost. The trio take in the bar, Unger and Ordway in disgust and Brell looking about in the way Il Duce must have taken in a meeting of blackshirts before the March on Rome and Unger asks a passing waitress (dressed like Skid Row Madonna) to be seated. Skid Row Madonna snorts in like she prepared to hock a loogie, then asks if they are cops. When all assure her they are not, she tells that the gay bar is across the street. Them’s the jokes, folks.

Brell meanwhile is still entranced, seeing the future. As Skid Row Madonna once again snorts (is she just disgusting or has taken a hit of some really bad cocaine?), Brell looks down at her as if only now aware of her existence, Skid Row Madonna tells them to come and tells them she will get them ringside to “let the headbangers fix your ass.” Ordway’s flabber is utterly gasted by the whole experience. The two Headbangers bite, claw and wail on each other, as a signs in the back assures us that “Genesee is on Tap.” Genesee, now there is a name I have not heard in a while. It is a Rochester based beer-company, and was and is big on the East Coast. But I am a West Coast lad, so I only became aware of it through brief excursions to the other coast. Also, notably, in the script there was a Raunchy Waitress who told them off and then another waitress sat them. In the film, the two roles are combined and that make sense from production perspective. Usually, in a film, someone sits down with the script and goes over speaking parts and makes notes about which lines perhaps can be given to another, because the pay scale is different for speaking vs. non-speaking roles.

The waitress asks them what they would like, and Ordway asks for a Scotch on the rocks and Unger a dry martini. The waitress rejoins: “I’d like to get laid, relayed and parlayed, but that ain’t gonna happen here. So what’s it gonna be…?” To which Brell replies, “Just three beers, okay?” The waitress snorts and stalks off. “Laid, relayed and parlayed” is an ancient slang line and it means what you think it does, but how did it find its way into this movie, which is not brimming with memorable dialogue? Well, in the Spring of ’87, when the Jessica Hahn scandal broke wide open in the biggest papers in the nation, Washington Post interviewed Hahn’s New York lawyer Stanley Siegel about the sordid situation, and he said of Jessica Hahn, “She was laid, relayed and parlayed.” Knowing a good line when they see it, the hacks in papers across the United States repeated it when aping the Washington Post story. And because folks on the West Coast did not have access to East Coast papers (or beer) without really trying in ’87 or ’88, the story and the line took about a year to travel across the United States, each time the Hahn scandal got a fresh injection of news worthiness and the local hack had to come up with something to spice up the morning paper read of Mr. and Mrs. America. Thus, the hacks who wrote this script, be it McMahon, Hogan or the man who got the WGA credit, the line was fresh in their minds and they snuck in… into a film made for little kids who comprised the core fanbase of Hulk Hogan. Ta-da!

In the ring, the bald headed and bearded man wins. He is portrayed by Jos LeDuc. LeDuc actually got a gig in the WWF right before the filming of the movie, doing a couple of matches with his gimmick being “Headbanger” in a weird bit of synergy. But it did not work out. Given the tangled tales of finances of this film, I wonder if LeDuc was given some matches as payoff for doing the picture. Naturally the violence in the makeshift ring sickens Unger and Ordway, while Brell is all-in. Ordway looks about in confusion at the mayhem and spots a chaw chewing Neanderthal from the script, and asks him about the refs, and the lines from as in the script follow. The Neanderthal, as noted earlier, is portrayed by Stan “The Man” Hansen, who is also called “Bubba” by the script and his Skid Row Madonna sister.

When Brell finds out about the lack of rules in the fight, he enthuses “Those are my kind of rules.” Meanwhile the fight awkwardly spills out outside. All right, it seems the director really enjoyed working with Brell and his minions and there is a lot of little moments thrown and freedom of action to do things not written in the script. But the director doesn’t really know how to shoot a fight scene, which is a bit of a problem in a movie where the whole point are the “no holds barred” fights. Shooting action scenes is very much a specialized skill and shooting fight scenes a subset of it. Even great directors or those with great reputations have at times found it hard to do a simple brawl and I have seen plenty of European war films where the film falls apart precisely as the fighting is filmed, because the director knows not how to shoot it. So now we have a star who cannot act, a co-star who is in her second movie, a bad script and a rookie director who doesn’t know how to frame fight sequences in a fight film. Bumpy ride.

Brell pays the waitress 100 bucks and tell her Neanderthal/Bubba can keep the change if he beats the man who just won the hard fought bout against the headbanger. Bubba charges in and the scene is ineptly and awkwardly shot. As in the script, Brell watches on in delight as Ordway and Unger are sickened. Meanwhile Bubba celebrates by calling for a keg. It is thrown, he catches it and then uses his thumb to poke a hole in it and sloshes it over his face and open gullet in celebration, while a little person in a cage above the ringside seats throws peanut shells into the beer glass of Unger, as Brell sells his vision of taking this to the cable TV to his horrified minions. The two minions stagger off to find a bathroom to pee. Unger, the bolder of the two, decides he will ask the locals where the bathroom is in their lingo and approaches a fat man in overalls (and no shirt) and asks him “where to bleed the old lizard,” to which the fat fella replies, “In your pants, wimp.” Mortified, Ordway drags off Unger and upbraids him for his choice of language. It is clear the director liked working with actual actors and was trying to give them more lines and do more scenes with them. Unger and Ordway stagger to the end of the bar, driven by instinct and find a disgusting bathroom with a side door that is labeled “V.D. Room.” The things one sees in a Hulk Hogan kids movie, eh? The bathroom contains a chained dog (why?) and overflowing urinal troughs that appear to have generated brown algae and pools of vomit. I am smiling, because while not as bad, this reminded me of the old bathrooms with horrific troughs in the Dodgers’ Stadium in Los Angeles. Also, the budget cannot be that small, because I have seen too many scenes featuring too many extras in the shot at all times, and while some sets are simple redress of an existing location, others are clearly created solely for the movie and decorated with much time and effort spent on them. Take this bathroom set, with the chained dog, custom graffiti, the toilets and etc. And there are tell-tale signs of fake walls and partitions that are lavishly decorated as well. Care and money was put into this film, just not a whole lot of thought.

Coming up, a scene not in the script, but which was written by the same person(s) who wrote the March draft. As Unger and Ordway discuss the horrific bar, disgusting waitresses and idiots galore at the urinals, they hear a disgusting sound of defecation behind them. A flush sounds, and the door of the stall is ripped open with Bubba emerging, offended at being called an idiot. He grabs Ordway and contemplates dunking him in the urinal, but stops upon seeing the man’s exposed penis (thankfully off camera) and notes, “What have we got here? A teeny wanger!” He then turns to Unger and is delighted to find another there as well, and chuckling to himself stalks off. By now, you may have realized the film is delighted with defecation and bodily fluids. Both of these things are obsessions of Vince McMahon. As to how do I know this scene as filmed was written by the same man who wrote the March draft? In the March draft, there is a reference to Unger and Ordway talking things over while holding their “wangers.” So the same hand penned both the March draft and the shooting script as filmed.

As in the March draft, Ordway does not see the show ever getting in the air, and Brell announces it in front of his HQ, as various tough guys listen and watch on TV and the radio. But the name of the show has been tweaked: “The Battle of the Tough Guys,” which is way less of a mouthful. Also, Spike’s Bar has had a name change as well, now called “No Count Bar,” but it is still downtown, and humorously, not all character names have been updated, for as per IMDB, some are still called Spike’s Bar something or other. And, there is no intro scene of Zeus in prison or the warden giving him his parole papers. We have cut some of the more effective build up scenes of Zeus, and I don’t think of it as a plus. When Brell and his minions arrive, the bar is still decorated and has a marquee and spotlights. Inside, a tweak, we now meet the would-be fighters and actually hear them be named. In the script, only the men who would fight Zeus after he had won would have the honor of having their names be mentioned. Thus, we actually do meet Brock Chisler, who is a biker with an eye-patch; Bulldog McPherson, who is a crazy man as understood by wrestling parlance of the day – he mutters to himself and smacks his head, while smiling; Klondike Kramer, who uses deodorant; and our Bubba, who greets them as “teeny wangers” and laughs, along with Skid Row Madonna who has brown teeth and counts the cash from all the new patrons. Also, in the script it is not clear how many fighters joined, but in the film it so far looks like we only have four: Bubba, Brock, Klondike and Bulldog. Huh? I mean, $100,000 is on the line, in 1988. Surely there should have been a pair of mall dojo princes who would have gladly donned their gi and set out to prove to the world their ability to break boards would totally get them to victory, along with some bar fighters that at this time knocked out people for $100 as the prize for winning the whole tourney, never mind $100k. I have read memoirs of MMA pioneers and they talked of going town to town and fighting in bars far worse than the one shown in the film to earn $500, and doing fights out in the gravel surrounded by bikers. And these are the legitimate tales, by the way. Lots of wannabe-tough-guys talked of have bare knuckle brawls all over Europe and America in underground clubs that only existed in terrible ’80s movies. My point here – for that large a stake, we surely could have gotten more people than the All Valley Karate Tourney, just saying.

A bad montage of bad fighting continues and drags, badly, and we follow the script. Then Zeus arrives. In the script he showed up through the door, backlit by the lights from the outside. In the film, he storms through a wall he knocks down (I think). The lighting is not sourced, and we have no idea why is so dramatically backlit, other than it’s a movie so it must be dramatic. Zeus moves slowly, because the actor is wearing ridiculous lifts that make walking hard, but make him appear taller.

A female P.A. approaches Zeus as in the script, but he grabs her face in a claw like vise and jerks her up thanks to the wires holding her up off camera and then drops her straight down into an empty barrel (what?). People ooh and aah this, but they have just watched four men gouge, bite, claw and punch each other in the groin for half an hour. I suppose the man-on-woman violence is much different, but the reaction here is a bit strange, given the locale, the customers and the atmosphere. Also, I cannot overstate how awkward Zeus moves due to wearing lifts. We immediately cut to Zeus’s face and even though the actor was born blind in one eye and had a striking look already with a shaved head, someone made the decision for him to have a unibrow as well. We then cut to Brell’s eyes and all of this is meant to show a fellow predator recognizing another of his kind. Then the camera pans to Zeus again and pans back to show his entire sweaty face. He is wearing the remains of his prisoner uniform with the sleeves torn off. And it is annoying how the slow build up to the reveal of Zeus in the script is just curtailed to one big shot of him entering the bar. In the script there was tension and you wanted to see more of this monster. In the film, the time between him entering and us seeing his face is thirty seconds if that. In the script, the monster reveal was slow and methodical and done by someone who understood how monster movies work. In the film, it is rushed and just thrown out there, and it does nobody any favors.

Zeus walks slowly to the ring, due to those lifts, and the Ref glances at Brell, who is one of the few men still standing, as the rest sat upon Zeus approaching, cowed by his physical presence. Brell stares at Zeus and intones, “Let him fight,” as in the script. Zeus gets in the ring and slowly lumbers forward, trying to steady himself on his lifts. Zeus does not so much fights as lets other fight him, not reacting as they beat on him with their fists and clubbing forearms as he yells and tosses them about. Due to the lifts, Zeus cannot fight and move at the same time, and thus the only time he can actually clobber his opponents is in shots where he is standing still.

Cut to Rip’s house, where we see a TV tuned into the fight and on an entertainment center filled with the trophies Rip or Randy or both won. Intermixed with the trophies are photographs of Randy and Hulk Hogan, and I do mean Hulk Hogan, not Rip or Ripper, because they are all of Hulk Hogan in his yellow trunks winning matches, getting belts and ripping his shirt off. The man watching TV is Craig, and seated on the couch are Craig, Randy and a nameless leggy young woman of indeterminate age. Charlie and Rip watch on. “Who is he, Craig?” asks Randy. “I don’t know, man,” answer Craig, “This is that Battle of the Tough Guys competition they’ve been talking about.” Okay, so it seems we are down to one high school sweetheart, not a full on harem, but the presence of at least one girl on that couch now leads me believe there was a scene shot of Randy wrestling at the meet and being distracted by the gal. It’s perhaps not as blatantly sexual as in the script, but a variation of it surely existed, only to be cut for time or content before the film was released. As Randy and Craig debate whether Rip could take on unnamed Zeus or not, Rip just watches on and Charlie wordlessly sits down in an ugly armchair. Charlie is supposed to be acting like he has PTSD, but thus far shown mild annoyance.

In the bar, Zeus continues his terrible fighting routine, knocking out competition. Even by ’80s standards, this is some bad action and although Zeus is ripped to the gills and has the guns, he is too muscled locked to do anything and is too unskilled to actually fight. Bubba goes into the ring to fight Zeus, and we note his hair is in a bit of a disarray. Spoiler alert, later on in the scene Zeus rips his hair out, but once again, since this took multiple takes, they didn’t bother to arrange the hair right every take, thus sloppiness passed off as Bubba just being in disarray, even though sloppy and messy hair is actually Klondike’s character trait, not Bubba’s. In a small neat moment, Ordway, who has been disgusted by violence all night actually beams and leans in with delight when he sees Bubba charge Zeus in anticipation of the wrecking machine destroying the man who besmirched the size of his genitalia, repeatedly, and terrorized him. Way to go, Ordway. You get your revenge by proxy, fella.

Back to Rip’s house, Craig, who is dressed like he is auditioning for Miami Vice but bought his clothes two sizes too large, looks on disbelief, as Randy looks out into, uh, nothingness, and his High School Gal watches with blank confusion. Upon further review she is not in any way shape or form 18, and has not been 18 for some time when the film was made. Rip says, “Isn’t that…?” And Charlie chimes, “I never thought they’d let him out.” Craig is stunned to learn they know this man, as am I. Someone decided Rip could not be kept in the dark and had to have known whom Charlie trained before him, which is an odd choice, because it is actually much more effective to have Rip know nothing about this brutal man and to learn of him as he destroys people. In the script, Rip is a bit taken aback by the violence on the display and we realize these two men must collide as Rip still thinks. Here, in the film, Rip casually says, “Isn’t that…?” as if he just saw a fella he knew in school who once puked at his birthday party. There is no horror or shock, or even wariness. Just casualness.

Charlie is just terrible here, and delivers his line like he has a free pizza waiting for him if he finishes his lines early. I have seen industrial training videos with better acting. Craig is almost as equally bad, and Randy’s Girlfriend just stares vacantly. In fact, the best acting here is done by Randy, who is sickened by the violence and tries to figure it all out. For his part, Rip turns to look in, uh, something at Charlie when Charlie admits to once being Zeus’s trainer. It surely could not have been surprise, for Rip already knows who Zeus is, and must have known his history as well. So what is that look? I couldn’t tell you. It is clear the director is in over his head with novice actors. Brell and Ordway scenes he can do, because both are veteran character actors, who may not be good, but at least know their craft. Throw a bunch of rookies and one terrible old(er) actor, and the director just falls apart. Could no one yell, “Cut” and explained to the man halfheartedly portraying Charlie that when he discusses Zeus he is talking about a ruthless killer over whom he lost control – a mad, bad, dangerous man he actually helped train to become even more dangerous. A tinge of regret. Horror. Something! Instead, good old Charlie just talks about Zeus with all the emotion of a robot. Thus far, 37 minutes into the film, the worst acting prize goes to Charlie. Take a bow, Bill Henderson. I do not mean to speak ill of the dead, but it takes special skill to stand next to Hogan, and still come off as worse in comparison.

In the ring, Zeus beats on Bubba with shitty Mongolian Chops. Hmm, I wonder if Bill Eadie showed him how to do those on the set, or if someone else did. As Zeus beats on Bubba, he makes sure to drag his body over to right before Brell. Unger is agog in shock, and even Ordway is back to being disgusted, while Brell looks on dead-eyed at Zeus as Zeus then reaches down and rips out Bubba’s hair and holds it out like tribute to Brell, screaming incoherently all the while. Brell smirks, and Zeus stands and holds up the tuft of hair to each side of the eight sided ring, still screaming. Kurt Fuller, the man who portrayed Brell, admits to not being a good actor when doing this film, but thus far he is a good second to the man portraying Ordway. And speaking of my favorite “No Holds Barred” character, as soon as terrifying Zeus turns his back to the table where Brell, Ordway and Unger sit and shows off the hair to others, Ordway steals a glance at the prone body of Bubba and shoots a small grin. Zeus may terrify Ordway, but when he doesn’t have to look at him, he can still enjoy the defeat of Bubba. Little things like that separate good actors from bad. Somewhere there exists an alternate universe where Charles Levin, the man who portrayed Ordway, is the no-nonsense trainer of Rip and he has an amazing scene with Rip about how he could never forgive himself for training Zeus.

Brell enters the ring, to the shock and horror of Ordway and Unger, who are worried for the safety of their meal ticket, but Brell is unafraid and steps up next to Zeus, grabs the mic and announces the winner of the challenge, then realizes he knows not the name of the fella and covering the mic with his cupped hand goes, “What is your name?” Zeus yanks the mic out of Brell’s hand, which does not make Brell afraid or displease him, and hisses “Zeus.” Brell’s face breaks into barely restrained utter joy, and he manages to eke out, “Love it.” Man, Kurt Fuller is really having fun here. Meanwhile, the guy playing Charlie just wanted to get off the set and collect his paycheck. I know I keep harping, but I have read the script, so I know what it says on the page and now I can evaluate what the actors do with it. Brell has good lines, but builds on it. Ordway has little to no lines, but does more with it. Charlie has decent lines and fails to show up and do even the bare minimum.

As we end on Rip staring into the TV, cut to executives holding up identical newspapers of the fictional Midwest Gazette, in the Sports section of which is a pic under a headline of: “Ex-Con Zeus: Thriller or Killer.” The writer of the article is one Tom Hoffarth, and he actually happens to be a real life person and sports writer in the greater Los Angeles area, who wrote for the “Los Angeles Times” and the “Los Angeles Daily News.” We pan across the papers read by the execs, and Brell walks in and announces the overnights are in and they won their timeslot, but the line about the actual ratings and the share are now excised. I smell the hand of Vince McMahon, who would not want Brell to get better ratings than anything his Saturday Night network and cable TV specials obtained. Unlike in the script, where two different men confronted him in the board room. In the film, only one man merely points out that there is a P.R. problem brewing over the bad telegrams they got about the violence they have shown. Brell dismisses it with a “they watched, didn’t they?” Thus there is no grand standing here by any executives, not even One Jr. Exec, who had his lines cut in the rewrite. And that makes sense. Recall, the film already told us Brell has purged the exec staff since taking over, and only loyalists remain and even those he terrorizes. No one is going to stand up to him or tell him he is wrong. And even the person who brings up the telegrams does not oppose, so much as warns of an impending issue with publicity. Brell is too triumphant to even belittle the man who brings him this bit of bad news. “All it does is keep us in the headlines,” he counters.

Next up, we are live on location, in a factory that produces sparks and features grimy people. Whoa there, we lost the icehouse. In the March draft, there was an icehouse fight where Zeus beat upon some fella in filthy longjohns, if you recall, and then he beat up some fella in a factory that produces sparks. Hmm. If we feature two different fights at two factories that produce sparks, then we got a bit of a problem, because in film, variety is the spice of life, and re-using sets is a bit of a novice move. Let’s be on the lookout for what the film does with the sets. In the film, the announcer tells us that we are seeing Battle of the Tough Guys Week Two, and that Lugwrench Perkins is ready to fight Zeus. Perkins is grimier and tougher and whiter than the rest, and sports a beard and muscles. Zeus appears in a chain mail sleeveless T-shirt, jeans and a pair of Wonder Woman gauntlets on his wrists. He also can barely walk, due to the lifts. However, when Perkins and Zeus fight, I notice Zeus can move a lot better than at the bar, so he is not wearing lifts this time around as Perkins is shorter than him. Zeus destroys Perkins with his Mongolian chops, and yells some more to the camera, clanking his gauntlets together.

In a limo parked outside Rip manor, Sam talks on the car phone with a mystery caller about how she will take care of things since she will have time now that they are doing an “overnight.” Hmm, we seem to have lost the IT scene, lads. So Rip is no longer a computer expert, I am guessing. Also, the director of photography should have been punished for what he is doing to Joan Severance here. I have seen commercials and terrible other films where she looks much more attractive than she does here. The lighting and the awkward framing are really doing her a disservice. It’s one thing to screw up filming a fight, because it is a skill, but when you can make a supermodel look meh, pal, you need to look into another line of work. This is what happens when you go outside the studio system in the late ’80s and try to put on a show on your own and don’t know what you’re doing. Speaking of incompetence, here comes Hulk Hogan, who is dressed in in Rip’s signature blue outfit, a variant of the red and black spandex he wore to the meetings and fight. Rip is here to say hello to Sam and to introduce his brother Randy and somehow Hulk makes that line awkward. Wait, how is that possible? He literally just introduces someone to someone. He does this every day of his life! Acting really seems to be hard, folks.

We cut to a small private plane roll down the runway. I almost made a faux-pas and called it a Cessna, until I saw the proud lettering of its great Wichita, Kansas crosstown rival Beechcraft on the tail. Sam’s voice over explains the itinerary: “Our schedule is gonna be pretty tight. My office is taking care of all the details. Transportation, tomorrow’s fan club meeting and autograph sessions, hotel rooms…” Rip interjects hoping she didn’t make dinner reservations for he knows just the spot. Hang on, are we skipping the IT scene and the Ripper is great with babies scene? Well, that’s interesting. You are making Rip seem even more boring than in the March draft, and that by the way is a real problem that was experienced when the movie laid an egg at the box office. Theater managers reported that the film did its best in the inner cities, where the little kids cheered for Zeus over Rip when the two locked up. While I would take that with a grain of salt, I can see how neutral observers might want to get on the Zeus bandwagon, as he kicks ass, while Rip beat up one fella with mascara and feathered hair and four doofs, while Zeus is out there every week taking out the toughest fighters. Also, my Spidey sense is tingling, due to the dubbing by Sam and Rip about all this. Did the test audience and distributors really hate the entire IT and Rip with the baby scenes that much as to demand them being cut? Or did someone think it would improve the pacing? I must be the only person alive who wants a director’s extended cut of “No Holds Barred.” I wonder if the footage does exist or if it was soaked in gasoline and set on fire.

Cut to Sadie’s diner, where Sadie regales Sam of how she and Rip go way back. Sadie as portrayed in the film is a lot less raunchy than in the script, despite the dialogue being the same. Either the director told her to be more wholesome, or the actress decided she was in a kid’s movie and toned it down. Also, Joan Severance has one fun moment in the film when as Sadie PG-hits on Rip, Sam looks at her fork in discomfort and when Rip and Sadie yak, she glances up, sees they are not looking in her direction and grabs a napkin and cleans her fork, the look of discomfort growing into distaste as she does it. It’s the little things that I take away from this movie when it is done right. Also, while the place is not great looking, it is far from a dive and appears to be more rural than “bad part of town,” so that decision was nixed as well in the film. Sadly what is not nixed is Hogan’s acting. He somehow seems to get worse by the scene. The scene is a woman hitting on him. One would think that is something to which Hogan, a man who had rats, could pull off. He is not being asked to dig into a well pain of here. Just a simple scene where a big gal flirts and you flirt back while being friendly. Boy, acting is really hard.

An action scene soon breaks out as a pair of armed robbers get inside and menace folks. Unlike in the script, nobody hits Sadie – on camera. As once again, we get a cutaway and something may or may not have happened off camera, for we cut to Rip telling Sam that once he starts moving to hit the floor. He grabs a bar stool screwed into the floorboards, rips it out and tosses it with ease into the head of one of the robbers clonking him. Then… well, then it gets dumber, for Rip grabs a pie off a nearby counter and throws it into the face of the second armed robber and goes down the rest of the counter, picking up the pies and flinging them at the robber. None of this was in the March draft. The second robber shakes off the a pie assault, but Rip charges him, disarms him and flings him down the entire length of another counter as if we are in a Western. Someone clearly decided to goofy up the action sequence, for the kids. Then, the first robber shakes off being clonked in the head with a metal bar stool flung at him (how?) and charges Rip from behind. Sam cries out a warning and Rip clotheslines him down. Sam is naturally much impressed by Rip’s acts, mouth agog and looking up over the countertop of the table and then under it, as Rip turns to her and snaps his fingers with his left hand to congratulate himself, with a big grin. What, no “Rip ‘Em” sign? For shame. Sadie comments she’s okay, and then she congratulates Rip for his acts and everyone in the diner applauds him. I can honestly say I would have preferred the visual of Ripper fixing a printer and then getting applause. I would remiss if I did not mention that as Sam emerges from under the table, she is framed by two applauding extras. On her right is an African-American man in a plaid shirt and a jheri curl who is into it and is earning his pay doing his job. On Sam’s left is an old man who looks about as enthusiastic as a “WWE2K” video game tester.

Next, more dubbing voodoo, as we lose the entire sequence of the hotel room clerk and dispute and instead voice-overs from Sam and Rip let us know that there is only one room. Man, someone really, really hated the first edit of this thing and told them to quickly redub to do a post-prod clean-up of this mess. The film has less running time as a result, so I won’t complain, but the choice of cuts is curious. The scene goes as in the script, only we get weird shots of Sam mocking Rip’s statements to herself as she brushes her teeth before the mirror, then she laughs at something Rip said after she says it in a mocking voice, so ya know the big galoot is growing on her. For his part, Rip is brushing his teeth after having divided the room and they do the sitcom thing where each pauses their brushing to go up to the wall to hear what the other is doing to show they have interest, as soft music blooms in the background. Rip and Sam get into the divided bed, we get the scene of Sam thinking Rip is masturbating violently when he in fact is doing push-ups and then the bed breaks, after the two have a discussion on Sam not dating due to being too busy. When Sam “comically” falls on Rip due to the bed break, Rip walks after she insults him and utters an idiotic line of “You don’t need this. You build bigger walls than I ever could.” And we know this wounds Joan and makes her rethink things. Only I am utterly baffled by why the line should be effective. Rip is saying Sam should feel bad for, uh… what exactly? Not wanting to sleep with him? For not allowing herself to become attracted to someone? I am not sure what the point here is, or why the statement is so armor piercing. It makes zero sense. At all. And yet the film reacts as if Rip is dead-on right.

Sam turns on the light by the phone by the bed, but we get no pantomime of will she or won’t she place the call as in the script. Instead, we just smash cut to Brell berating Sam in his board room. It was in fact Brell who cancelled one of the rooms, forcing Sam to share the room with Rip. Brell gives a rambling speech, listing Sam’s inability to seduce Rip due to her getting the hots for him, mocking her all the while and chewing the scenery with gusto, as Unger watches on. Sam says Rip is a nice guy, to which Brell replies he eats nice guys for breakfast. Sam, in full on Dynasty style rig, stands and says, “Not with my help you won’t.” Brell’s rejoinder is to backhand Sam back down to the couch. Okay, so that leaves Zeus and Brell as the only two people to engage in the male on female violence. In the script, Brell tried to hit Sam, but didn’t make contact and she got out. In the film, Brell makes contact. As Sam bounces off the couch and onto the floor, Unger and Ordway (there he is!) look away in disgust, which Brell notes. This distraction allows Sam to skitter out and Brell yells for her to return, for she owes him.

Let’s stop here for a moment, because the film has lost any semblance at a consistent tone. On the one hand, we have horrific violence perpetrated by Zeus, portrayed in a semi-realistic fashion, and on the other, we have Rip throwing pies at armed robbers as a terrible unoriginal song plays over the soundtrack for laughs. Granted, tonally the diner scene could be claimed by its makers to set up the high-larious shared hotel room scene to further expand the “hijinks” portion of the film, but it doesn’t. The Sam and Rip bed scene takes a lighthearted romantic-comedy as-old-as-the-sand-in-the-beard-of-Moses concept of two strangers having to share close quarters and tries to make it funnier. The key is that the premise is already funny, and the execution is meant to make it funnier. Now, the finished product is in fact not funny, but at least the premise is inherently comedic. There is nothing inherently funny about an armed robbery of a diner. What makes the scene “funny” is the comedic violence done by Rip to resolve the situation. And that’s where the problem lies. Is the violence in the film meant to be cartoony, or is it meant to be serious? That is a question the film has a hard time answering. What it instead tries to do is whenever things gets a little too serious, is to try to lighten the mood by changing things up a bit, which is the cinematic equivalent of having someone play the slide whistle and juggle while an eight year old is suffocated by his drunken stepfather in the background. It doesn’t work.

Back at Rip manor, Sam confesses to Rip, who this time around did not cotton on that Sam was a mole until she told him (and the edit and dubbing makes me think this was a post-production change as well), and we get awkward fooling around. At one point, Rip is trying to find Sam’s bra strap to unsnap and fumbles and it kinda works as a nice and simple scene, with Sam laying atop him and gently mocking him. It appears that Hulk Hogan may not act in a lot of scenarios, but in a scene of fooling around on the couch trying to get a gal’s bra off – he’s a natural. The TV is on and Rip struggles to find a remote to turn off and still mess about with Sam as romantic music plays, only for us to hear on the TV the interview with Zeus, who is calling him out. What hurts this scene is that in the script, it is Sam who invites Rip to try to make the whole situation right and turns on TV just to settle her nerves. Here, Sam walked in on Rip (we presume, the scene is joined in progress due to edits) as TV plays on in the background that we do not hear, but hear as the interview with Zeus is setup. It’s a little thing, yes, but it’s handled badly.

Cut to Rip setting up his charity thing at some outdoor place full of kids. Parked among the kiddies is the 1986 Lamborghini SUV. It is the first Lambo that was off-road and I am not sure if it was Hulk’s or someone else’s. As Rip teaches children the importance of sportsmanship, a helicopter lands with Brell and his champ and minions. Zeus approaches, slowly, due to being on lifts, and wears a sporty upscale denim (I know what I just typed), dungarees, gauntlets, chain with a skull where a bolo should be, and a giant rectangular Z for a belt buckle. Goofy outfit aside, I think it is neat that we are seeing Zeus assemble his outfit in parts, as he is learning and earning to be the champion of Brell. Thus, first, he came in broke as a convict and had wristbands, then upgraded to Wonder Woman gauntlets and got the Zeus pants, with the lettering down the side. Now he is getting the buckle. Each appearance gives a new accessory. Zeus leads the flying V formation of Brell and his two minions towards all the little kids, who cower behind Rip, who juts out a large arm to protect them. Craig is on hand, with his face painted and being a goof and even he tries to shield the kids, or maybe the kids are quicker to hide behind him than he is at spotting danger. Among the assembled is Sam and sad Randy as well. Zeus staggers up to the scene, barely moving due to the lifts, gets in the face of Rip and breathes heavy. Rip breathes heavy as well. Now this is where the film screws up, badly, and its makers realized it, after the fact.

In the script, it is clear Rip could have and would have fought Zeus if not for the kids as he cast his eye about. We also know from a diner scene, as scripted, not as it was filmed, that Rip regards Zeus as unfit for the honored confines of the wrestling ring. The combination of not wishing to lower himself to the standard of Zeus and not wishing to endanger the children are spelled out, clearly. Here, nothing. Rip eyeballs Zeus, nostrils flaring, but there was not one cutaway to the kids and Rip realizing this is not the place. Thus, Zeus showed up, Brell grandstand challenge, and nothing happened, without us hearing of Rip thinking Zeus is not a worthy foe and without us seeing Rip not wishing to endanger the little kids. And only after Rip has done it – or rather not done it by not accepting Zeus’s challenge, the film has to clean up the scene and tell us why Rip did what he did. That is inherently weaker. Instead of letting us identify with Rip and show us what he is thinking, the film will tell us what he thought afterwards. This is piss-poor film storytelling, and worse, the script got it right, but the film didn’t. That was a choice, and a choice to present a weaker story. Let us see how the film tries to clean it up.

As Zeus leads off the flying V formation, the last goose of it is Unger and he actually mad-dog stares at Rip as he struts back with Zeus and Brell. Man, when Unger is dumping on you, you have problems. The kids are all acting like they do not understand why Rip did not fight, and Rip stares off as the helicopter lifts up and goes off. As Rip stares at the copter, we hear voice over with Charlie assuring Rip he did the right thing by not stooping to Zeus’s level. We cut to Rip and Charlie in some quiet spot, rocking white satin jackets, with Rip rocking a teal doo-rag as well. Rip opines Charlie does not think Rip can take Zeus and further says that everyone thinks he backed down (maybe because he did?). Charlie once more assures him he did the right thing and he was proud of him and repeats it. End scene. All right, so the intent is to teach all the little kids that because someone calls you out, then you don’t have to fight. A great lesson in morality, to be sure. And if you watch how the fights progress, the Ripster does not initiate any of them. He dishes out disproportionate violence, but he is always attacked physically first before he responds. But nobody points that out. So what are we to make of it? Besides the fact that is it is bad film storytelling? Well, I think this is the case of rewrite-itis. When someone rewrites the same script over and over and over and over again, they learn the story and the characters inside out, and the motivations gleaned from scenes present in earlier drafts stick with the writer even when said scenes and dialogue is cut. So I think it made perfect sense to the writer or writers who have done edits to this disaster over the course of months that naturally everyone will get why Rip will not fight Zeus. You don’t do cut away shots of little kids to show us what Rip is thinking, because naturally everyone will know it already, right? Well, no, the audience won’t. And they only knew they screwed up after all was said and done. Thus we get a sloppy insert of Rip and Charlie talking about how Rip totally did an amazing thing out there, filmed later, with Rip showing the same satin jacket as Charlie, who wore said outfit to the Rip-Bullet match in the opening scene, which I know was filmed later due to the shooting schedule being somewhat reported at the time and one other trick which I will share with you a bit later. So after editing the script and the crowd scene in such a fashion that they lost the reason for Rip’s actions in it, the film had to do a make-up call of having a scene afterwards of Charlie and Rip talking about how great Rip’s actions were done. Bad filming leads to more post-edits.

Now let’s get some more male on female violence and introduce sexual assault into the world of Hulk Hogan, ya know, for the kids. Sam gets out of her car, a nice red convertible parked next to a mommy wagon. She carries her laundry, a poster tube with rubber bands, a coat and a pebbled flat business purse. A thug grabs her shoulder as she tries to open the door to the staircase going to her apartment (?) and says (post-prod dubbing): “Mr. Brell says it’s party time.” Whoa there, we went from implied sexual assault in the March draft as a result of an errant goon tearing the shoulder strap of Sam to full on implicit rape threat and assault in the film. In a kids movie. Aimed at Hulk Hogan fans. Produced by WWF. The Hell, movie?

The goon slams Sam face front on the hood of a car and we cut to Rip riding up on a Harley. Note, we do not hear the awesome sound of a motorcycle as Sam is at her lowest and the goon as it his closest. Nope. Just a nice cut away from slamming a woman face first on the hood after threatening her with “party time” to a static shot, obscured by a tree, of Rip riding his motorcycle down a winding paved road. What? Then, it gets worse, we see Sam on her back on the pavement of the garage, legs up in the air, with the thug on top of her, on his knees, between her legs, as she fights off his hands, screaming “No! No! No!” In a kids movie!

And then Ripper rounds the very short corner of the garage itself and we still do not hear his Harley. He just rides into camera after a sharp turn and there is the thug atop Sam, and the thug spotting Ripper scrambles. Seeing a sobbing woman on the pavement of the garage, who just had a man atop her and between her legs, Rip casually asks, “Are you okay?” And when a sobbing Sam ekes out a nod, Rip says, “I’ll be back” and rides off after the Rapist. Rip chases down the Rapist, who plays hide and seek between cement columns of the underground garage, as piss-poor quality post-prod dubbing gives out such lines as Rip telling Rapist he better run and the Rapist saying Rip is crazy, while Sam gathers herself up to her knees and then scoots up against the bumper of a car, still sobbing. Oh, and the soundtrack is jaunty, because as stated previously, the tonally the movie is deaf.

Rip eventually catches the Rapist, as in the script, scooping him up with his bike’s handlebars but instead of dunking him into a manhole cover, he just kinda pitches him into a tree, after telling him: “Harley and me and you and the tree” and shoots the Rapist a “Rip ‘Em ” sign… right handed. Rip returns to Sam after disposing of the Rapist and tells her he hates to see her be hurt. Rip, you just threw a man into a tree for rape. You did more damage to a cardigan thug who tried to swing an ineffective pipe at you. That dude went head first through the glass window of a limo, after you beat on him for minutes. Just saying. Your sense of retribution is flawed, Ripper. Joan Severance for her part cries and sells the Hell out of a scene.

Cut to sparks and shadows, as Randy and Craig go to check out Zeus’s workout. Post-prod dubbing lets us know that Craig does not think it is a good idea, but Randy wants to see Zeus in action. Wait, wait, wait, we are back to Randy being a hot-head, via a post-prod dub? Erm, okay, but we have not seen Randy be a hot head, at all, during this entire film. In fact, he has no characteristics, at all, outside of being Rip’s brother. Recall, the film cut his wrestling scenes, and that entire hothead arc. We are an hour into the film and now we learn Randy is a hothead, just before he makes a hothead decision. Also, remember how I said earlier to watch out for what happens with the sets? Well, we’re back at the factory of sparks. We just saw Zeus fight a mook named Lugwrench in one of them, and now we get to fight Zeus fight Rebar Lawless in another. Anyway, Zeus beats on Rebar as Craig is excited to see Zeus, but now Randy appears to be disgusted. Wait, wait, wait, we just had dubbed in audio of the opposite. Why did Randy want to come see Zeus if he was a wet-blanket about the whole thing? And by the way, this is the first time we see Zeus in his ensemble outfit that he would then rock in the WWF: Zeus pants, Z buckle and shirtless, with the gauntlets. Zeus beats down Lawless, then goes into the crowd or just kinda steps towards them which causes a stampede, just as Brell steps out of the remote truck with his minions. As Ordway tells Brell he knew a winner when he saw one, Craig and Randy run by and bowl over Ordway and Unger and fling Brell against the truck. Security guards quickly arrive and Ordway naturally saw the whole thing and knows these kids were trying to attack Mr. Brell. Brell waves everyone off, as he is fine. Brell spots Randy and Craig and tells the guards to step off. Brell is actually happy to see Randy, because he spots young Randolph’s “Rip” T-shirt under his shirt and thinks he (Brell) is well on his way to converting Rip fans into Zeus fans. Randy, with all the emotion of a constipated Wesley Crusher during the first season of “The Next Generation” goes, “We are not Zeus fans!” And Craig lets it slip that Rip is Randy’s brother. Ordway has no idea what to make of this. Unger gives a placid smile. But Brell is delighted by this development. Brell tells Craig and Randy they are VIPs and that Zeus loves VIPs, and orders the guards to “bring them” to the factory of evil sparks aplenty.

Oh dear.

Brell brings up Randy and shows off his T-shirt to a suddenly annoyed Zeus, who now has a posse. Hmm, the script went out of its way to tell us Zeus is all alone, why give him a posse? Seems an odd storytelling choice, considering it will have zero pay off. Brell asks Randy’s name, but Randy says nothing, so Brell backhands him (wow, Brell is much more hands on in the filmed version of the story) and Craig gives Randy’s name to prevent further beatings. Brell goads constipated Randy by telling him that he must be a good fighter himself, what with him being Rip’s little brother and all. Zeus tells him that Rip is yellow, and Craig jumps in and tries to stop Randy from doing… something. Brell backhands Craig into an overturned barrel, because Kurt Fuller wanted more action scenes, I guess. And Randy wails on Zeus, who feels no pain. Zeus grabs Randy by the throat and emits a banshee quail that is high pitched and nothing like what we have heard before. Unger is scared. Ordway is horrified (I think I typed that twenty times during this review). Brell is grinning, lips jerked back to show teeth.

Young Randolph beats on Zeus’s hands, escapes, does a half-roll and eats a Zeus backhand that looks like it hit the air twenty inches in front of Randy’s face, but Randy falls back as the foley artist earns his or her pay making thwack sounds. Zeus kicks Randy down to the feet of Brell, punting him in the ribs, repeatedly. Brell looks down at Randy’s unmoving bodyand shows us his O-face, as Zeus screams out. End scene. Hang on, no neck crank? And while I am glad we did not show the lifeless body of Randy being thrown out of the back of the moving car before Rip’s gym, I have a funny feeling that was filmed but then cut. But we have also cut out what is it that made Randy get injured. We saw one attempted choke, one backhand and two kicks. And while the front double-handed choke looked like it was sunk it, we saw Randy escape it and still fight and evade afterwards. Then, we only saw three points of contact. Yes, I know Zeus is a monster, and Randy is the little brother, but it’s very low impact. A lot was left on the cutting room floor and instead we got reaction shots of Ordway, Unger and Brell, but as the camera cut to them we only heard of blows landing, not that of a hideous mangling. And if the makers of this fine spectacle were concerned with what the kids think – then why include rape? So, the film decreased the Zeus on Randy violence, and Rip used pies instead of much more conventional violence against the robbers, but the film then radically upped the Rapist on Sam violence and made it crystal clear given the positioning of the bodies what would have transpired had Rip been late getting there. Also, at this time, the trend was the opposite in American cinema, with sex being taboo, but male on male violence, so long as it was not gory, being totes fine. So the film is bucking the trend, for no good reason. Once again, you have to marvel at anyone who is more comfortable depicting an attempted rape than a neck crank.

Cut to Rip tearing open a door and getting to Zeus’s gym. As he enters, music starts to blare. Rip covers his ears and rips the speaker off the wall by the entrance and stalks further, screaming “Zeus.” We see that Zeus trains in a traditional square ring, which makes no sense since Brell repeatedly talked of octagonal ring as the battleground of Zeus, but to be fair, we have yet to see Zeus fight in that since the first conflict. All other fights were on location with ill-defined boundaries of combat area. Rip goes about the gym, overturning equipment, until he comes to a room where he spots Zeus, and attacks him, but it is only a hologram and instead Rip crashes through the mirror wall behind it, and faces the projector. Fun fact, Hulk Hogan shoot-cut himself when he smashed the mirror. Rip stalks the gym until he finds the camera from which a chuckling Brell watches the proceedings, with Ordway and Unger, naturally, and then, as in the script, spears it with a weight bar. Ordway and Unger flinch from the projectile, Brell meanwhile is… opaque, or as opaque as Kurt Fuller can be at this stage of his career. I am not sure if he is celebrating that he finally got to Rip, or if he is now wondering what he unleashed or if he is simply scheming. You may also have noticed we have reversed the scenes, because this should have come after the hospital scene, not before it, per the March draft.

And only now, after the gym tear apart do we cut to Rip in funereal black attire, with black fingerless gloves with white ties on them, so you know things are serious, and a black doo-rag with white threads, because it is very serious business, kneeling by the bed of young unconscious Randolph, as useless Charlie sleeps in one armchair of the hospital room and Sam reposes in the other and reads a book “Men Who Can’t Love,” which is just tremendous. As in the script, Rip talks to Randy, and says how it is now his turn to stand up to Zeus as well, and Randy opens his eyes at this (because hope is magic). Randy smiles beatifically at Rip, but then cries, and Ripper breaks down in tears as well.

The Hulkster is baring his soul, and it is glorious and awful.

In the script, Rip walks off, with Sam trying to go after him, but Charlie stopping her for Rip had to find his own way. In the film, he speaks softly, and then Charlie wakes up and Sam stops reading her book, and we simply cut to Brell standing in the octagon, flanked by our boys Unger and Ordway and announces how the most important sports event of all time will take place in two weeks in this very ring. We get a junior varsity Robert Altman slow circle shot of the tiny studio arena with people laying cable and cleaning the platform upon which Brell’s control room will sit and then cut to Zeus’s refurbished gym, where Zeus smashes cinderblocks suspended by chains from the ceiling with his bare hands as some kind of shiny metal diadem encircles his head. Meanwhile, Rip watches as Randy is immersed into a pool while strapped to a board. This is like the “Rocky IV” pre-big-fight montage where Drago trains in a gym while Rocky wades through snow in Siberia while living in a hut, as interpreted by people with no talent and no understanding of how montages work. As in the script, Brell tells all of his execs that Rip won’t win, but afterwards takes Ordway and Unger aside and asks about the elevator.

We see a dressy crowd arriving outside WTN HQ, including Sam in a nice gown, Craig in a suit that fits (good for you, young man), pushing the wheelchair, and the nameless mute girlfriend of Randy. Okay, so she was not in the March draft, unless this is the Leggy Blonde and her role was expanded in the film and then was cut during post-prod edit. Recall, in the script, it is just Craig who accompanies Randy. Hmm, if the Brell plan is to still kidnap Sam, and someone has to push Randy’s chair to ringside (in the script it was Craig), then it would mean Craig could assist Charlie in the search for Sam, because the actor portraying Charlie could do nothing physical, in addition to being unable to act. Let’s watch where this goes. The usher spots the group and tells them to go right this way, but unlike in the script we do not linger to show this is part of the evil plan. In his dressing room, Rip and utterly useless Charlie talk. Rip sits before the mirror and has his belt on the counter before him. And the belt is not the white leather backed Winged Eagle we saw in Act I. This is a much rarer bird – the so-called Andre ’87 belt, which was commissioned, per kayfabe, by Bobby Heenan for the winner of WrestleMania III match between Andre and Hogan. Going into the match, Monsoon assured us the winner would wear the new belt, regardless of whether it was Hogan or Andre, but then Vince changed his mind and when Hogan won, he kept wearing his old belt. Thus, the Andre ’87 is a rare championship belt which was not worn by any champion. Rarer still, in the film, it is shown on white leather, not black. But hey, don’t take my word for it, look up the information on it, and you will see this is precisely the belt Vince McMahon donated to “Planet Hollywood” (remember those?). So what are we to make of the Winged Eagle becoming the Andre ’87 mid-film? It actually gives us insight into the order in which the scenes were filmed. Recall, in ’88, the Winged Eagle had just debuted in February as the championship belt to be defended in the Andre-Hulk match which featured the twin Hebners as a way to setup WrestleMania IV. So the Eagle is brand new. The Andre ’87 was, well, made in ’87, so when the film began the Andre ’87 was available. Then, as production was wrapping, Vince must have made the call that if he was going to make a Hulk Hogan film in which a character played by Hulk Hogan was a WWF champion, then he would want the champ to walk around with the newest belt, so the Winged Eagle was made available for the production. And a perusal of the Wrestling Observers around this time indicates in August of ’88, as filming was winding down, Bill Eadie did his scene as Jake Bullet. So that is when the switch could have been made. So that is why we have the Winged Eagle in Act I and the Andre ’87 in Act II. Don’t worry, it’ll get even messier once you see the belt Rip is rocking when he goes to face Zeus.

Back to the scene, words really do fail me to describe how terrible the acting from ole’ Charlie is here, as he reassures worried Rip that Randy will be here, for Randy’s presence is necessary to be part of the Rip, Randy and Charlie ritual… that we never saw in the first place in Act I. Rewrite-itis strikes again. Also, having shot the film out of sequence, this scene was done prior to Act I, so Rip is referencing a ritual that Hulk Hogan will film later, but which in fact was not filmed (or cut), making Rip’s insistence of Randy being here seem slightly awkward. Speaking of awkward, Craig, Randy, Mute Girlfriend and Sam exit an elevator, where a pair of Security Guards salute them and wave them through… until the Guards wall in Sam as she tries to leave the elevator and then close the elevator doors. On paper, this read dumb. In the film, it is somehow worse, with Craig trying to open the elevator as it is closed and Randy screaming what is going on, for he is in a neckbrace (why? we never saw Zeus do the neck crank from the script) and cannot turn his head. The two Guards bring in Sam into the executive lounge, where Ordway, dripping with slime, offers Sam to watch Zeus “mutilate your boyfriend” from within the confines of the lounge. Unger is there as well, naturally. Sam is escorted into a leather chair and she sits. Unger places the call to Brell to let him know the plan is in effect, as in the script. And Brell makes the call to Rip, just as Randy, Craig and the Mute Girlfriend appear. Brell gives his ultimatum for Rip to take a dive after ten minutes. Hulk Hogan tries to look concerned, and orders Craig and Charlie to find Sam, and that leaves Mute Girlfriend something to do – push the wheelchair of Randy down to the ringside. It also, as stated previously, leaves Craig to do something in the film other than get backhanded. Go, Craig, go!

I am of two minds about what we have seen thus far. On the one hand, we have dialed down some of the crazy, but on the other, the film still makes not a lick of sense, has terrible acting, confusion over who is its core audiences and wildly inconsistent messaging. Outside of Brell and Ordway, the characterizations are all over the place and their motivations are at the mercy of the script requirements. While the edits fine tuned some of the nonsense, what they left behind somehow became messier. The hero is also… Well, stuff happens to him, and he reacts. He does not drive the story. Brell does, as does Zeus. There is no hero’s journey. Merely a challenge deferred until the hero finally decides he wants to fight. That’s just silly. This sloppy excuse for nonsense has assembled elements of traditional storytelling here, but jigsawed them out of place and is now trying to hammer the pieces together whether they fit or not. “Love interest? Put it there, fellas. Come on. Younger Brother, oh come on, I think we know what do with that. Do we have a mentor? No, well, can we get something which pass for one? No. Well, just get that guy over there. Yeah. Okay. Do we have fights? Great. Do we know how to shoot them? Well, we can try, can’t we? Oh. Okay. Well, still, put them in.”

No Holds Barred: The Film: Act III

We start with a mid-torso walking through nothingness, with… the Winged Eagle on a white strap across his waist. And as Rip enters the studio and we get a pan back of the crowd, sure enough Rip has the Winged Eagle. That means the Zeus-Rip and Rip-Bullet fights were saved for last to be filmed, after the Eagle had arrived. But in the film, we see the Eagle in Act I, the Andre ’87 in Act II and the Eagle again in Act III, despite the action in the locker room taking places only minutes earlier. Continuity! Oh, and to mess with my head further Mute Girlfriend gets her one and only line in the film: when an usherette helps her secure Randy’s wheelchair to a ringside spot, she says, “Thank you.”

In a neat moment not even spoiled by Hulk Hogan’s acting, Rip (in the ring) shoots Brell a dirty look (in his command station above) through the glass window. Brell smiles and looks up at the digital readout above him and chuckles to himself. Rip looks up as well and gives a weary nod. He will take the dive, for the sake of Sam. We hear a roar and the dressy crowd looks about in fear as Zeus emerges… dressed like a Dirty, Dirty Cylon Space Hooker. Zeus barely moves, due to the lifts and also sports metal kneecaps and silver toed boots. He’s also accompanied by a pal with a jheri curl (the March draft went out of its way to tell us that Zeus walks alone and has no entourage, here he has a posse). We cut to Rip’s face, which twitches as his nostrils flare and he growls out of the side of his mustache and shakes. Notably, Rip’s throat has, barely covered by makeup, abrasions on it. Hmm, if I had to guess, those are from the marks where Zeus would grab him to pretend to choke him with his hands and Rip’s T-shirt in the takes of the fight filmed before this scene. As the announcer tries to hype up Zeus, Zeus backhands him down and the mic gives feedback, with the Ref rolling out of the ring like a pro. I checked the IMDB credits, and the Ref is listed as Dean Warren Welch and this is his only credit. Hmm. I am wondering if this a cousin of Welches we had never heard about, or just a random local actor with a not that rare a surname. Regardless, the Ref does a good and quick roll out of the ring. Way to go, Dean. Then Zeus and Rip face off and growl at each other. Zeus smacks Rip around and chokes him with his own T-shirt, thus showing where those abrasions might have came from. On the set, Hulk Hogan encouraged Tiny Lister Jr. to make it look good and really get into the character, when Tiny asked what happened if he went too far, Hulk and him agreed on a safe word. Since both liked James Brown music, their codeword on the set was “Free James Brown,” a reference to the then recent news of James Brown being arrested in May of ’88 on drugs and weapons charges. Back to the exec lounge, where Ordway and Unger are glued to the violence on the big screen and the six small screens as well, and they talk about the ratings going up. Wait, what?

In the script, it was explained that the exec lounge small TVs each monitor ratings live – which is a far out concept for ’88, but that is what this universe wants to believe. But in the film, it is never explained or filmed, so the reference makes even less sense. Whoever was the script supervisor on this shoot either gave up or was just plain incompetent. Sam notes the Guards are distracted, while Brell cheers on Zeus whomping on Rip. Zeus beats on Rip some more as Sam plots her poorly planned and silly escape that goes exactly as in the script. Out of all the things to keep, movie. Rip keeps taking a pummeling and then suddenly mounts a comeback, realizing he has to keep up appearances for a bit more, which is as close to subtle as this film gets. The Guards and Minions chase Sam, while in the ring Rip punches Zeus to no effect. We get the poorly filmed stairwell chase, as Rip and Zeus do a test of strength which Rip gives way to appease Brell, as Randy looks on the verge of emotional breakdown. As Sam reaches the floor of the studio arena, Unger and the Guards lunge at her and she screams out, but Craig and Charlie come to the rescue. Instead of a cool forklift scene we get Charlie beating one of the guards in the gut with a fire extinguisher (!) as Craig engages in fisticuffs, though mostly off camera. Go, Craig go.

In the ring, Zeus is focusing on the neck of Rip, choking him with the ropes and beating on it with his big clubbing forearms. All this is well and good, but since we never saw Zeus use the neck crank on Randy, it is meaningless, since we don’t know the neck crank is Zeus’s big move. That deflates some of the drama. Not all of course, we are still seeing a man getting pummeled and choked, but in the script it was more – it was a setup for a big, bad, dangerous move that put Randy in the hospital. Here, it’s just Zeus being a nasty cuss. In a “you can take a wrestler out of the wrestling, but you can’t take the wrestling out of the wrestler” moment, Zeus goes to slam Rip’s head into the exposed turnbuckle. This is obviously a safe move in Hollywood filming, even with a novice such as Zeus doing the action, but Hogan’s instincts take over and he juts out a right forearm to make contact with the nearby top ring rope to slow his impact before hitting his head on the buckle. It’s actually kinda goofily charming to see Hulk Hogan resort to wrestling moves in the middle of a choreographed fight in a film. Next the big moment of Zeus using the corner post as a sword to skewer a prone Rip. As Rip looks about in hazy confusion, he spots the post at the last second.

Out comes Craig, useless Charlie and frazzled Sam, who screams at the ref to stop the fight and then dead-ass stares at Brell, who stops smiling. In the ring, Zeus has Rip in the neck crank, but the camera cuts away quick, and of course without the neck crank of Zeus on Randy, the move just appears to be another in the arsenal of stuff Zeus does to hurt Rip. Divorced from context, it looks goofy as well, so all around negatives on that one. The Ref decides to get into the ring, now, because of Sam’s command, rather than previously when Zeus tried to skewer Rip with the ring post, and gets tossed for his trouble, with him doing a nifty roll. Good job, Dean. In the ring, Zeus does his neck crank and Ripster falls on the mat, convulsing. Once again, without seeing the move on Randy, this is now meaningless, because nobody is explaining what the move does or why it is important. And because the film suddenly got gun shy about violence, the camera keeps panning back from the neck crank, only allowing one close shot of it that also makes it look ridiculous.

As in the script, Rip sees Sam and Randy moving a pinkie, all with a Zeus boot on poor Rip’s neck. But the film has Charlie distract Zeus by yelling at him. What? Zeus walks off Rip’s neck and goes towards Charlie, kicking the twenty inches of air in front of Charlie, which causes Charlie to tumble. Well, that’s two things that Charlie did, but this time to the detriment to the film. It is not that Rip starts powering back upon seeing his beloved safely at ringside and his young brother trying to overcome paralysis (that was never mentioned in the film as well), it is literally Charlie calling off the mook beating on him and sacrificing his feeble old body to give Rip time to recover. That undermines Rip. He should have made the comeback himself, not had an assist. And of all the people who should have known that, it is Hulk Hogan. Baffling choices abound. Finally, Rip lies on the buckle, sweat pouring down his body and he looks out at the cheering crowd and mounts his comeback. So, hang on, it’s not the sight of Sam that makes him power up. It’s not seeing Randy fight back paralysis. And it’s not even his decrepit and quite useless trainer get kicked in the mush. It’s people chanting his name. That, that right there is pure Hulk Hogan. But once again, it is wrong for the film. So Hulk whiffs on one time that he should have known better. And then whiffs on another due to his nature. Regardless, both were dumb things to film.

The rest proceeds as in the script, though more slowly. Rip mounts his comeback. Beats down Zeus. And then hits him with his finisher, knocking him out of the destroyed ring. Zeus falls on the carpeted floor from the apron of the destroyed ring. Then, Rip stalks him. This is poorly explained by the film, and by poorly, I mean not at all, but Rip wants a little frontier justice for what Zeus did to Randy and do the neck crank on him. Someone decided that would not play well, and also having not seen Randy get his neck cranked, we don’t know why Rip is going for it or what it’s impact is, having only seen the move once now when Zeus did it to Rip and we are still hazy on the mechanics of it. But when Rip goes to pick up Zeus, Zeus does a zombie sit up and grabs Rip by the throat. This is why on TV wrestling fights have announcers, to explain that which the wrestlers cannot explain themselves. In the film, Brell’s announcer (having recovered from a Zeus backhand rather quickly), simply calls the action as a trained actor with zero wrestling knowledge does off the screenplay and lines given to him prior to filming. He fails to explain what Rip is doing or why, which may be a good thing, as that means they did not have to awkwardly post-prod dub him over due reticence to go into details of the neck crank. Curiously, once the action spills outside, the Rip and Zeus fight takes on more pro-wrestling match characteristics than their in-ring bout, with Zeus grabbing a bear hug, ramming Rip into the post from the outside, and Hulk Hogan selling it as he would in a wrestling ring. This is where Hulk Hogan does turn it up a notch, and you can see him start to lead Zeus through the match as Hogan pictured it and him calling the action. In the ring, the broad moves of Zeus and Tiny Lister Jr. wearing those stupid lifts made everything stilted and overly choreographed, but now outside, Hulk Hogan does better at calling a match. For about thirty seconds you catch a glimpse of what this film might have been if Tiny Lister Jr. wasn’t such a stiff and the fights better resembled a pro-wrestling match. Also, it only now occurs me that Randy is wearing Rip’s cross, and that should have been a big deal, and is a big deal in the March draft. Here, one more scene excised to keep running time going, but goodness me we needed those three minutes of Rebar Lawless wrestling over a piece of wrought iron with Zeus in the Sparks Factory Part Deux.

Randy falls out of a wheelchair and Zeus punts him and goes up the staircase (to escape?). Rip chases after and gets up to the scaffolding before Brell. I will give the film this, it makes more sense on film than in the script as to how each participant ended up there fighting in front of Brell, and they made the scaffolding extra wide to accommodate a pair of 300 pound men doing a mini-fight up there. The fight ends with Rip doing his finisher on Zeus and killing him by having him fall back 20 plus feet through the air and into the collapsed ring, as the audience cheers. Then Rip starts making animal noises and goes after Brell. I would estimate 15% of Rip’s dialogue is growling noises in the film, by the way. Zeus – if you count yelling – closer to 90%. Brell is cornered, scared and gets electrocuted, by backing his buttocks against an exposed wire, and the crowd cheers even harder. Because the only thing better than murder is a double murder. Randy is inspired by the murder to stand up and a smiling Rip comes down, hugs Randy and gets in the ring in a really awkward cut and shoots the crowd a “Rip ‘Em” sign, and freeze frame and roll credits. Except, because it is a freeze frame, we realize it is not in fact Rip doing the sign at the studio arena, it is footage taken earlier from Act I, from the Kansas arena after he beat Jake Bullet. Our film ending screen shot is from the start of the film. Is this what George Lucas meant when he said “The Phantom Menace” was poetry because it rhymed? Did the “Rip ‘Em” sign scene in the studio turn out that badly? Why the edit?

Let’s try to discuss.

No Holds Barred: The Film: The Discussion

There are three films here. The film as written. The film as filmed. And the film as edited and presented as a final product. The script was bad, but goofy and had so many insane touches it almost developed a charm. The film as filmed is harder to judge, but seems to have been closer in spirit to the script than what we end up watching. Still, even if there is a director’s cut or extended cut of this film, it would reveal a film at odds with itself: how much violence to show, and against whom and when? The film as presented as a final product is a mess. I have already touched upon the major issues in my review, but what stands out the most is how idiotically inept the post-prod dubbing and edits were made and the choices made about what to edit. Randy has nothing to do but to stare, weep and fall, thanks to the film removing any scenes which could in any way define him. Craig comes off as more of a rounded character than him. Craig! Randy’s Girlfriend was clearly meant to be a bigger role and while I doubt it would have made the film better, it’d be nice to learn more about her. For a film that goes to the trouble to tell us Randy is closer to Rip due to their parents’ death (and this, in a kids movie, in the first few minutes) just to explain why there are no parents in the scene where Randy lays in the hospital, we are thrown this weird female character that has one line and we don’t know. It is not clear what happened to Ordway and Unger either. In the March draft, Charlie pins them to the wall with a forklift, in the film, it is presumed Craig kicked all their asses (!) while Charlie uses a fire extinguisher one of the two guards. Did the audiences not react well to Craig punching Unger? Seems like an odd choice. The entire chain of scenes and sequences involving Sam and Rip while out on location shoot were cut to a mere voice-over, and comes off weird. But the crown of nonsense is taken by the Zeus and Randy scene which is so butchered as to make it impossible to tell why Randy is in a wheelchair, paralyzed, wearing a neck brace and was nearly in a coma. Instead of talking of the film’s many faults, it may be easier to talk of the things that did work.

Joan Severance and Rip fooling around after she escapes Brell’s clutches actually goes well for a scene involving a pair of novices under the errant eye of a confused director and bad lighting, poor plotting and terrible dialogue. Ordway’s character is a joy and his scenes with Brell are only mired by the bad dialogue, so that when they have non-verbal scenes they come off much, much better. Stan Hansen got free medical insurance for three years by walking around with his mid riff exposed for a couple of weeks, pretending to defecate in a horrible bathroom and telling men they have tiny genitalia. Good for him! And the non-verbal scenes in the board room, with a toxic manager and a culture of fear rang true, because the people filming it could relate. Also, Joan Severance is an attractive woman, whose beauty shines through even the bad lighting, terrible cinematography, a director of photography who should be hanged and a silly script. So there’s that.

Let us talk about how this film was released, and then dwell a bit on its mystery budget.

In our social-media 24-hour-news at-a-glance connected world, a “troubled production” would get instantly exposed. As soon as any feature film gets even a whiff of trouble, the stench of it reaches all our nostrils immediately. But such was not in the case in 1989, and horrific films could sail through their entire production cycle and land with a thud in the theaters, with only a few trade papers and critics giving early warnings. The earliest warning of the awfulness of “No Holds Barred” came in the form of not what was said, but rather what was left unspoken. Jesse “The Body” Ventura, portraying himself as an announcer in the film, and when reached for comment about the picture, refused to discuss it. Ventura could be accused of many things, but being tight lipped was not one of them. But the second and much better publicized warning came in March of 1989, when a screening was arranged for the distributors, to let them see on what they would soon bid. Most left halfway through the picture. Of those who stuck through, only two expressed interest in distributing the film. One was a small outfit whose name has been reported differently by various publications, and who could not recall of ever hearing it. The second company was New Line Cinema, and their bid for the rights was zero dollars.

New Line Cinema executives indicated they would distribute “No Holds Barred” to the theaters but not pay any fees for the right to do so, oh and furthermore, New Line said they would not pay to actually distribute or promote it either, leaving Vince McMahon with the bill for the cost of getting the film into the theaters and all the commercial and marketing work, but allowing McMahon to use their distribution network to get the film into the theaters. Essentially, New Line Cinema would let Vince distribute the film himself, and pay for the privilege. And New Line Cinema won the bid. Recall, Vince McMahon had no major studio backing. This was his first effort, with no track record of success, and he had no name talent behind the camera and only Hulk Hogan before it. And while Hulk Hogan was a brand, why would Paramount, Warner Brothers or even Orion bother to distribute a film in which they had no say in making, and in which they held no financial stake? Well, why would any company risk financial exposure in a project presented to them after it has been completed? There is only one – if they thought the project was well done and financially viable to justify the risk of investment. Since none wanted to invest in the distribution of the film, it was a clear signal it was terrible. And since a terrible film with no studio backing would find it hard to get into the increasingly crowded (even in 1989) theater space, New Line Cinema essentially was loaning Vince McMahon their good name to even get theater chains to look at the film.

“No Holds Barred” therefore faced the challenge of not just earning back its budget, but also making back enough money on top of it to cover the costs of marketing and distribution, and do it all with an unfavorable money split with theaters who knew a bad film when they saw it, given all that had transpired with New Line Cinema. And that’s where the math gets really crazy, because to this day no one knows the budget of the film, because Vince McMahon kept changing the number to try to present the film as a success, and had to keep reducing the announced budget as the additional costs multiplied. Thus, when the film finished shooting in August of ’88, the budget was announced by Vince as being $11 million. By the time of the first screening, it had somehow become $6 million. And then, once New Line Cinema got done putting the boots Vince and the picture, the budget suddenly became $1.5 million. Vince tried to make the film profitable by retroactively reducing the cost of making it. For his part, in his ghostwritten autobiography Hogan put the budget at $8 million, in 2002. I have a guess as to how that numbered was arrived at, and I will share my theory in a bit. The only independent contemporary source who took the trouble to cover the financial goings on of the WWE at this time, our very own Dave Meltzer, estimated the budget at somewhere between $15 and $19 million, a figure which makes sense to me. However, given the realities of distribution and marketing, the total cost of getting this film into the theaters and trying to get anyone to see it must be therefore put at double that. So it is more than likely, the final costs of the film come out to close to $40 million. That’s a lot of red to try to turn to black.

Vince McMahon has often been accused of living in his own reality, and there are plenty of examples of him seeing things from a point of view not shared by anyone else, but by mid April of 1989, he had realized the enormous costs he would need to cover to turn profit and tried to do his best to try to salvage the situation. First, the retroactive budget revision as outlined above. Second, earmark the use of WWF TV to aggressively market the film and use the commercial time allocated to WWF on their TV programming by TV networks to promote the film instead of being sold to their regular advertisers. Given that the WWF had become a TV juggernaut, such things alone would have given the film exposure few non-studio films could ever hope to achieve. But it would still not be enough, because Vince could do the math. No matter how much he promoted the film, his aforementioned efforts could only be rewarded if the public actually turned out to watch the film. If they had not, then while he could hide the costs from the public and the hacks who wandered into Madison Square Garden to write a terrible column for terrible local papers about pro-wrestling success and slap the word “bodyslam” into the headline, he really could not achieve profit unless he increased revenue, and the odds were now very much against him. So he turned the problem on its head. Instead of using the film to turn Hulk Hogan the wrestler into Hulk Hogan the movie star and ride the profits off the theater going public, what if he used the film to turn one of the actors in it into a wrestler and ride the profits off the wrestling public coming to see Hulk Hogan wrestle one of the actors from the film – Zeus. After all, Vince may not know how to make a film, promote it, or distribute it, or do the same to a boxing bout, but he knew pro-wrestling. So what if he were to use the entire film as nothing more as a giant commercial for a new character and opponent to face Hulk Hogan in the world in which Vince felt he was master, and conquer the box office from the wrestling side.

With WWF TV machine all in on promoting “No Holds Barred” for over a month and WWF TV announcers and commentators suggesting the film might net Hulk Hogan an Oscar (yes, that really was a talking point on WWF TV), the film opened on June 2, 1989 in 1,318 US theaters and grossed $4.957 million in its opening weekend. The critics were not kind, and it was immediately understood barring great word of mouth, the drop off would be steep and no more than $15 or $16 million could be squeezed out of the theaters, though Hulk Hogan would tell us the film was a great success, since it was holding its own against “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and beating “Ghostbusters II,” which is an idiotic lie, but would not even crack the top ten lies told by Hulk Hogan. Records show Hulk Hogan’s film dropped like a stone and not once – in any market – doing better than “Ghostbusters II.” As for Dr. Jones, his film would go on to gross $197 million (not adjusted for inflation). After three weeks “No Holds Barred,” a third of theaters stopped showing it, and the rest would try various gimmicks to drum up any sort of audience, such as a double bill with “Pink Cadillac.” In a month, the picture would be gone from the theaters entirely, earning $16 million, and becoming a flop. And the $16 million provides a clue to the $8 million budget Hogan said, because he too could have heard of the math of the costs of the film doubling since WWF was doing all the marketing and etc., and since even Hulk Hogan could not claim the film was box office greatness, the best he could do was to make the film break even by giving the budget as half the revenue collected from the film, therefore quoting the budget at $8 million. Or at least that’s Greg theory.

After the film’s release, Vince McMahon recalled that during the filming of “No Holds Barred,” Hulk Hogan promised to return his salary should the film not be profitable. McMahon therefore impatiently waited for Hogan to give back the alleged million dollars he paid him for the film. It would be a long wait. Forever, in fact. Whether the conversation took place or not is impossible to know, but even if it could have happened, nobody who has ever worked with Hulk Hogan in any capacity could ever be under any illusion he would forsake the First Rule of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. Prior to his foray into reality television and his subsequent divorce, Hulk Hogan was often called the shrewdest negotiator in pro-wrestling and the smartest with his money. Hogan would not part with a million dollar paycheck based on the one sided recollection of a conversation which may or may not have occurred. However, years later, Hogan did acknowledge he was aware Vince thought he would and that Hogan’s refusal to return it hurt his relationship with Vince. Only in pro-wrestling could one be expected to bribe one’s boss to make him happy by giving back the money earned from work done for him.

For most people involved in the film behind the camera, “No Holds Barred” (1989) was but a weird blip on the radar of their uninspiring careers, save for the writer most associated with this flop, whose career was effectively over as a result of it. The extent of his contribution to the film has been disputed by the Hulkster himself, but as we have seen, the Hulk has a tendency to gild a lily. At the end of the day, the man whose name was on the script paid the price for having lend his name to it. The director slunk off to the world of TV and continued his existence largely unscathed.

Most of the talent before the camera went nowhere, some remained good character actors, others stuck to being bad ones, and for some this was to be their sole feature film or TV credit. Some of the men who fought Zeus were wrestlers in their own right and they tried to squeeze their five minutes of fame from it into the wrestling world and failed. The most successful wrestlers were those who went into the film already successful in their chosen profession. Stan Hansen continued to wrestle for All-Japan Pro-Wrestlingr. As for Hulk, the film did dim his wattage considerably in the eyes of Hollywood. Hogan has a different tale to tell, but Hogan always has a tale to tell. For Joan Severance she went on to have an uninspired career as well, but seems to have regarded her time on the set of NHB fondly, and had nothing but nice things to say about Hulk Hogan, calling him a “teddy bear.” As for Tiny Lister Jr., the film is partially responsible for landing him the part of bully Deebo from the “Friday” films. When casting began, at first the makers of the film concentrated on locating football players to be physically imposing, but none they tried out for the part made a positive impression, then someone asked what if they were to cast pro-wrestlers and that is how Tiny Lister’s name came about. The strangest knock on effect of the film came about in Memphis, where they decided they had to get a Zeus of their own, giving a career break to one Charles Wright, our favorite supreme pimping voodoo priest.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for sticking me with on this journey. The balcony is now closed. Have a good one, and please be safe.