No Holds Barred (1989)

My first thought when seeing the cast list on the screen was “Holy shit, Mark Pellegrino was in this?!?  AND David Paymer?!?”  Remember everything I said the other day about WWE Studios movies being surprisingly decent?  The only reason they’re surprisingly decent is because this movie existed first.  This is a movie so bad that professional wrestler Hulk Hogan cannot even convincingly play a professional wrestler Rip.  This is a movie so bad, that it hasn’t even been released on DVD yet (another sign of the coming apocalypse is that it will be released on July 3).  It is terribly made, horribly dated, and makes today’s current professional wrestling product seem scarily legit.

The story line of the movie is clearly one based upon producer Vince McMahon’s enormous ego, or at the very least an inspiration for his future Mr. McMahon character.  Veteran character actor smarmy guy Kurt Fuller is the head of a the ubiquitous Global Television Network or some other ridiculous name.  Apparently in this world, the networks are what professional wrestlers are signed to, not separate companies like WCW or WWE.  Since Rip is an enormous ratings earner for the other unnamed company, Fuller wants to bring him onboard with his network, but Rip is a man of his word and oh god shut up me.

It really is one of the laziest movies ever made.  It’s like McMahon and Hogan thought that Hulkamania was such a powerful force that it would run wild over the box office.  Well, it did finish in second place that weekend, and if Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade didn’t exist, well that’s a parallel timeline I don’t ever want to visit.  There are so many production gaffes that it’s really absurd that this movie doesn’t garner more mention in worst ever movie polls.  Probably because snooty film critics still refuse to watch it based on the subject matter and Hulk Hogan.  That being said, I can’t give it a full zero, because it does have some cheese value, and it’s not offensively bad, just stupidly bad.

0.5 / 5