Certain sports are kind of hard to capture correctly on film when compared to other – I mean compare how many boxing and racing movies we have compared to the utter lack of Lacrosse or Powerlifting flicks – but one sport you’d think wouldn’t have much of a problem is technically not really a sport at all – the weird and wacky world of professional wrestling.
Now, I’m not here to throw around harshly inaccurate words like fake, but the controlled nature of Sports Entertainment would make you think that this violent pantomime of spandex-clad maniacs would translate perfectly to the big screen – and you’d be right. But it’s only happened since the release of Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, which peered beneath the curtain of the actual business and the strain its put on the performers lives. Since then we’ve gotten the upbeat Fighting With My Family and the even more depressing The Iron Claw, which both has benefitted from the real nature of Professional Wrestling being well known.
But how did pro wrestling movies fare in the days of Kayfabe, when fans still believed it was still real to them, dammit?
Not good, my little Hulkamaniacs. Not good.
Rip Thomas is the heavyweight champion of the world and has managed to tear through as many pretenders to his title as he has pre-match t-shirts he shreds to the delight of a cheering crowd. However, one person who doesn’t buy into Rip-mania is Tom Brell, the tyrannical head of an opposing TV network that are somehow struggling in the ratings thanks to the champ’s popularity. Quite how a single wrestler can negatively affect another network’s entire ratings is never truly explained, but Brell has sworn to stop at nothing to either entice Rip over to his side, or ruin him completely.
After his original plan of driving him to a secluded spot and beaten up by thugs proves to (shockingly) be a bad idea, he instead tries to find someone who can beat Rip in the ring by starting a countrywide search for burly lunatics named Battle Of The Tough Guys. However, rather than realising that his ratings stink probably because he calls his shows stuff like Battle Of The Tough Guys, Brell eventually discovers a profusely sweating brick of pure psycho that goes by the name of Zeus and demands that Rip face him in the ring.
Rip refuses because of the kids and stuff, but despite his attempts to remain a good tole model, Brell’s taunting cheap shots get ever more below the belt when he first sics corporate spy, Samantha on him, but when she falls in love with her target, Brell has Zeus simply put Rip’s younger brother Randy into a coma.
Finally enticed to fight with this boss-eyed monster, Rip has to put his life on the line against an opponent who wants to put him on the mat far longer than a three count, can our hero pick up the win?
It takes a special kind of film to casually saunter along and make Sylvester Stallone’s ludicrous arm wrestling movie, Over The Top look like fucking The Color Of Money in comparison, but believe you me, No Holds Barred has the chops to make any sports movie, no matter how ropey, a world title contender. How this move wasn’t made by the Cannon Group, I’ll never know, but it’s certainly managed to reverse engineer it’s absurdist action, frenzied patriotism and adolescent plotting down to a tee and it’s probably not much of a surprise to learn that it was the then World Wrestling Federation’s first attempt at getting the squared circle onto the big screen.
Virtually everything about this movie is completely baffling. If you’re going to get Hulk Hogan to play a Hulk Hogan-type character, wouldn’t it make more sense to get him to play – oh, I dont know – HULK HOGAN? Instead, Terry Gene Bollea has to ditch the yellow bandanas, the leg dropping and constant pleas that everyone say their prayers and take their vitamins in order to plays someone… not that different. Still, when he’s not exploding his way out of the reinforced roof of a limo, beating up faceless thugs, or – in a moment that’s so stupid it verges on utter genius – scares a goon so much by growling at him he literally shits his pants (Hogan’s reaction is truly one for the ages), the movie demands that he engage with his greatest opponent yet: actually having to emote in ways other than yelling directly into the camera.
Watching Hogan try to pull of actual, subtle drama proves to be way more excruciating than any submission hold known to man as he either tries to negotiate more tender moments when he rumbles such sweet nothings as “I hate it when you’re scared… or hurt. Y’know?” into the ear of of Joan Severance’s romantic lead, or breaks down into sputtering tears over the hospitalized body of his mauled little brother, brother.
However, like many dumb action movies that emerged from the 80s, No Holds Barred, proves to be a world heavyweight contender in the realms of movies being so shit, they transcend to another level of awesomeness and the unintentional laughs hit harder than a leg drop.
Due to the writers genuinely being clueless as to how camp they should be making this movie, the film gives us hilariously fantastical versions of how wrestling works and what it takes to run a successful TV network. I’m sure that many movie moguls have pulled some shady shit to get their way in real life, but Kurt Fuller’s cartoonishly villainous Brell seems to have absolutely no compunction against hiring goons to beat someone up, kidnap someone at the drop of a hat or even attempt to rape someone in an endless procession of atrocities that would easily fill up an entire season of Dark Side Of The Ring.
And on top of everything else, we have cult actor, Tommy Lister Jr. giving it his all as the muscle bound barbarian hired to destroy Rip’s reign while sporting a weird, partially shaved uni-brow and featuring giant “Zs” shaved into his head as he gurns and growls like a juiced up neanderthal.
Is No Holds Barred a good film, then? Absolutely not, and I’d go as far to say that it’s cartoonish tone probably put the art of pro wrestling back about 5 years – but if you’re in the mood for a ludicrous, idiotic, action romp that has live crowds cheering as someone gets fatally electrocuted right in front of them, then its so-bad-it’s-good mana from heaven – even though it technically doesn’t even feature that much wrestling.
What’cha gonna do, brother, when an awful wrestling movie runs wild on you?
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