Episode 84 — No Holds Barred: LIVE!

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

Ok, this movie was clearly made to be terrible so it has no chance of being the focus on this podcast, but I figured while we were down a pro-wrestling pit, I would post Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies:

 

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

Ok, this movie was clearly made to be terrible so it has no chance of being the focus on this podcast, but I figured while we were down a pro-wrestling pit, I would post Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_UC0V3CuMg

I know many of the guys that worked on this, as it was filmed pretty close to me and used a lot of the local indy wrestling talent. I even remember the insane Craigslist posting looking for crew and talent that seemed to be written by someone that didn't understand that when you're looking for extras to throw on zombie makeup, you DON'T need to throw half the script up there as well. Anyway, it actually premiered a few months ago and had been making the festival and convention rounds, so it's nice to see it finally getting distributed by TROMA no less! It looks like it's a blast, and I heard it was a fun set, but silly me, I ended up working on the OTHER wrestling movie that was filming in the area, Steve Carell and Channing Tatum's "Foxcatcher". Man, did I ever pick the wrong horse!

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

So you could have had a movie with Rowdy Roddy Piper fighting (and biting) zombies, but instead you got the movie about a paranoid schizophrenic who commits murder and the tragedy of broken dreams of youth? Yikes.

[RyanSz 3140]

Ok, this movie was clearly made to be terrible so it has no chance of being the focus on this podcast, but I figured while we were down a pro-wrestling pit, I would post Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_UC0V3CuMg

 

Made a thread for this in the bad movie recommendations section. What's odd is that they show quite a few of the main characters dying in the trailer, leaving almost zero suspense to the film.

http://forum.earwolf.com/topic/10991-pro-wrestlers-vs-zombies/

[Rattrap007 52]

Anyone else notice in the French Restaurant scene the Waiter is faking the accent? Watch it again. He does the accent until the Chef scolds him for not telling them their good friend Rip was their. Then says "Monsieur la who?" in a real southern drawn at who part. He is faking the accent to try to be more authentic. It is at about 21 minutes in.

[RocHoover 400]

So this was touched on, but to extrapolate..

 

RIP's brother goes from being a paraplegic, to a quadriplegic, to then standing on his own. All within a span of two weeks (the film distinctly mentions two weeks around the point of the hospital montage)

 

So to recap: he is in the hospital in a slight coma and seems to begin rehab. There is a spot in the rehab Montage where RIP's brother is walking on parallel bars while SUPPORTING HIS WEIGHT WITH HIS ARMS, then during the third act at the TV studio he appears to be a quadriplegic as he can now barely move his pinky and fingers during the fight.

 

Also, continuing in the insane movie logic: Zeus attempts to impale Rip with the ring post. If he succeeded rip would have suffered a gruesome and grizzly death.... On live network television. Kurt Fuller' character was also egging Zeus on to actually murder rip as well. This is kind of implying that there would be no repercussions (jail, lawsuits, etc.) to the fact that a murder took place with not only witnesses in attendance but also broadcast live to the world.

 

No matter how powerful he is, there is a ton of evidence that would hold the TV exec responsible at the very least for some kind of criminal neglect lawsuit or something if Zeus succeeded in murdering rip

[RyanSz 3140]

I think I figured out why the final battle was in a shitty version of the AWA arena (for all you wrestling nerds). In the movie, Zeus goes about fighting a bunch of different tough guys on their home turf which are mostly bars or factories of some sort, but still their home turf. The final arena was Rip's home turf, or at least a mockup of it similar to the first fight in the film. Wrestling promoters would use this kind of tactic to really put a guy over as a legit force to be reckoned with by showing how he can beat his opponents even when they have home field advantage.

[ctrain 2]

Maybe this has been covered already but I'm pretty sure they didn't use the "Hulk" Hogan name because at the time "Hulk" was considered a Marvel comics property. I remember when I was a kid I had a Hulk Hogan bandana and at the bottom next to the trademark symbol it said "Hulk" is a trademark of Marvel Comics.

[Jeremy Dahl 2]

Guys—whatever happened to the second Hulkamania movie??

[RyanSz 3140]

I think the chances of a second NHB movie being made after it was announced yesterday that Vince McMahon lost 350 MILLION DOLLARS in the stock market in a single day. This sequel could easily bring those dollar bills back to his still pretty full wallet.

[Smigg 1488]

http://grantland.com...ay-career-zeus/

 

A slew of henchman roles followed until No Holds Barred, the Hulk Hogan vehicle that answered the question: What if Ed Wood were still alive and made a film about professional wrestling? Lister nailed the audition, arriving in character as Hogan’s rival, Zeus, a psycho ex-con with a Z shaved into his head and an Anthony Davis–esque unibrow. He had only a handful of lines in the film, with most of his screen time dedicated to beatdowns and wild mugging — but considering his primary objective was terrifying the target audience of 9-year-old Hulkamaniacs, the performance is iconic in its precision.

 

To appear as a threat to the similarly enormous Hogan, Lister bulked up to 305 pounds. But no amount of muscle could protect him when, while filming the climactic fight scene, Hogan broke Lister’s nose. “Man, I caught Tiny. I don’t know if I was tired or overzealous, but I just splattered his nose.⁵ I was apologizing, afraid to God he would kill me, but he was way cool about it,” Hogan says. “We had this thing we would say to each other, ‘Free James Brown,’ if he squeezed me too tight or I was squeezing him too tight. We both loved James Brown’s music so, if he was choking me too tight or I was choking him too tight, we’d say, ‘Free James Brown,’ which would make us laugh so we could loosen up. When I hit his nose, he goes, ‘I thought you loved me. What about James Brown?’”⁶

 

While No Holds Barred flopped at the box office and was ravaged by critics — Roger Ebert called it “a disgusting film” — it provided a built-in angle for a main-event feud in the World Wrestling Federation. A few weeks before the film debuted, Lister appeared on WWF programming as Zeus, the No Holds Barred character, claiming that Hogan had prevailed in the movie only because the fight was staged. It was meta before meta. The Hogan-Zeus program main-evented three WWF pay-per-views in 1989.

 

At first, Lister wasn’t interested in wrestling. “I ain’t really into putting my hand up in between some dude’s legs,” he says today. The money, however, towed him into the ring. Nearly 25 years later, Lister can recite the exact paydays: $56,000 for SummerSlam, $17,000 forSaturday Night’s Main Event, $40,000 for No Holds Barred: The Match, and $35,000 for Survivor Series.⁷ “Vince McMahon was a great negotiator,” Lister says. “He would already wire the money into my account before he even started [negotiating]. Who’s going to say no?You’re going to take 56,000 out of your checking account?”

[RyanSz 3140]

I'll give credit where credit is due. While we mock it now for how cheesy some of the angles were involving celebrities in the WWF, Vince knew how to put on a helluva spectacle. The first Wrestlemania is proof of that as it was a make or break moment for his promotion and has evident by them still being around and the biggest promotion in the world, it worked. Unfortunately Vince is still stuck in his 80s mindset at times where we now see the product being more kid friendly and constant celebrity appearances, most of who are B level or below.

[Joe Lerini 7329]

I'll give credit where credit is due. While we mock it now for how cheesy some of the angles were involving celebrities in the WWF, Vince knew how to put on a helluva spectacle. The first Wrestlemania is proof of that as it was a make or break moment for his promotion and has evident by them still being around and the biggest promotion in the world, it worked. Unfortunately Vince is still stuck in his 80s mindset at times where we now see the product being more kid friendly and constant celebrity appearances, most of who are B level or below.

Every now and then we get a Hugh Jackman appearance to balance out the Snooki's of the world. *shrug*

[Smigg 1488]

Nothing compares to WCW's RoboCop cameo.

[Joe Lerini 7329]

Nothing compares to WCW's RoboCop cameo.

Not even WCW's Chucky cameo?

[Smigg 1488]

Not even WCW's Chucky cameo?

 

Oh shit, I forgot that one.

 

Those last couple of years in WCW were hilariously bad as well.

 

One of my favourite moments was Shawn Stasiak, he was interfering in a match, and he's sneaking to the ring, trying to not be seen, which was rendered completely pointless when what you saw was a guy sneaking to the ring, on what was essentially an elevated catwalk, with his theme song being played as he's doing it.

[RyanSz 3140]

The bad thing about the Chucky cameo was that they were hyping that for WEEKS and all it amounted to was a quick video and Rick Steiner looking even more like a fool. And I'm sorry the worst cameo in wrestling ever is David Arquette.

[Smigg 1488]

What makes it worse is that they made him champion, against Arquette's will. They basically said "Look, motherfucker, we're promoting your movie, now you take the belt".

 

But, Arquette did donate his entire pay off from his WCW run to the families of Brian Pillman, Darren Drozdov and Owen Hart.

[RyanSz 3140]

That was the only good thing to come from that whole debacle.

[Kickpuncher 5012]

So I'm watching this movie right now for some stupid reason, and (at least halfway through) it's kind of insane how much more Kurt Fuller is in it than Hulk Hogan. There's a 21- or 22-minute section where Hogan only has one line, including 15 minutes where he doesn't appear at all.

[Jamie Power 224]

The AVClub have just posted an interview with Kurt Fuller. I particularly enjoyed this little nugget:

 

But there was a scene where I offer him money to go to my network, and he’s supposed to shove a check down my throat, and his line is, “I won’t be around when this check clears.” But nobody told him that, on movies, you fake it. In wrestling, they really do a lot of the stuff. But he shoved a check down… my… throat. And I couldn’t stop him. I literally thought I was going to die. We finished the scene, and I coughed it up, and he said [Does a spot-on Hulk Hogan impression.] “Oh, sorry, brother, I didn’t know we were supposed to fake it!”

[Incurable Ennui 0]

I'm pretty amazed that as Tiny Lister is thrust down onto the Octagon from a dozen or so feet, he makes a perfectly circular chasm in the octagon. Also - I don't se the hole with the ring bar in it - so I'm assuming that's lodged in his back, no?

 

And I loved that the cast was billed according to importance, despite it saying "in order of appearance." Like some editing assistance just assumed that's what you were supposed to put at the beginning of the credits.

[LLJK 0]

Hey everyone,

 

I'm sorry to bump a thread from a few pages back but I have been going through the HDTGM backlog and earlier today finished No Holds Barred. I know this does not matter and is probably a very curious first post, but:

 

Joey Lauren Adams must be clearly hiding an early uncredited appearance in this flick.

 

Around the 22:10 minute mark she appears in green yelling "Come on, get em! Tear him apart! Get em! Rip 'em up! Do it!" This would be a few years before her first imdb credit, but I think I'm a big enough Kevin Smith fan to know that voice and profile when I hear/see it. I've been a Nerd Poker fan for a few months and have been devouring HDTGM since, but I thought it was really weird that folks were attributing the person with dwarfism in the cage to Pete Dinklage while everyone was missing this.

 

Looking forward to this being the icebreaker getting me into these fan communities, love that Zardoz was given two episodes of of attention. It is nuts.