Dick Murdoch Movies
- 1985
- R
In this routine sports-dominated, low-budget drama, real wrestling footage with all its comic sideshow elements supplement the simple story. Lesley Uggams (Jeff Dial) is a documentary filmmaker out to do a project on a wrestler who supposedly killed himself after decapitating his opponent in the ring. Uggams suspects that the suicide was hype -- something unknown to the wrestling world, of course -- and that the killer wrestler is back in action as "The Mask." ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jeff Dial, Robert Glaudini, (more)
Film auteur Sylvester Stallone wrote, directed, and stars in this re-working of Rocky to fit an old-fashioned Hollywood formula, depicting three brothers from New York's Hell's Kitchen of the 1940s who want to claw their way out of poverty. Lee Canalito is the muscle-brained iceman Victor, and Armand Assante is the embittered, crippled war veteran Lenny. But the smooth-talking con man brother Cosmo (Sylvester Stallone), sees beef-cake Victor's fists as their ticket out of the slums. Cosmo, ever the manipulator, convinces the dull-witted Victor to participate in a series of bone-crunching wrestling matches as Kid Salami. Cosmo and Lenny exploit Victor's brute strength to grab the fast money on the wrestling circuit. But their climb to success is halted when the local gangster Stitch (Kevin Conway) puts up his malicious and dangerous wrestler Frankie the Thumper (Terry Funk) to fight against Kid Salami in a 22-round meat-pounder. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sylvester Stallone, Kevin Conway, (more)
In this made-for-TV movie, honest wrestling promoter Frank Bass (Ed Asner) must struggle to foil the efforts of some lowlife wrestlers who are attempting to profit from a fixed fight. ~ Iotis Erlewine, Rovi
