Pick Six Movies: S25E05: Over the Top
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Well, hey there, and welcome to a new episode of Pick Six Movies.
And let me begin with a question.
You want to arm wrestle?
Why wouldn't you?
Why arm wrestling is just holding hands with a little more oomph.
It's shaking hands with more sweat, it's the high five that goes on for far too long and it's at the center, or at least the end, of this week's movie.
Over the top is filled with all the father son, tropes and Robert logea scowling that a movie made up almost entirely of montages can fit inside it's brief runtime.
And why are we watching it?
Why, that's the whole premise of the show.
Pick Six Movies is a podcast where we pick a theme in the case of season 25, something we call Holiday Road, all about road trip movies and then we take six movies based on that theme and give them the business.
We give you a little history of the movie, maybe a fancy anecdote or two, and then my best pal, chad he's the one doing the introduction in a minute and me that's Bo who's talking right now come together to turn our hats around and look at the movie scene by scene to see what makes it tick.
But enough explaining, let's get to some wrestling.
Chad, show these folks how sweaty an introduction can be.
And here we are once again with Beth S the intern and Beth T the intern, two Beths working with me today.
Help me record this introduction.
You know, beths, when I stopped to think about the number of emails that we received wanting us to review over the top.
That number is one, that's right.
One single email here it says hey guys, how about you review over the top with Sly Stallone?
Sincerely, mitch Come-Steen Parenthesis, not my real name, you don't say Mitch Life lesson here, beths, even the smallest action can have a huge impact.
That quick little email changed the life trajectories of staffers here at Picksix Movies.
The research that other people did about this film, the writing of this intro Heck, it led to us needing not one but two Beths to the interns To help me record this introduction.
Let me ask you this, Beths have you watched Over the Top?
Do either of you even know what Over the Top is about?
Nope, beth S.
Sorry, beth T.
You were thinking about the animated Raccoon and Turtle Suburban sprawl film Over the Hedge, based on the newspaper comic strip of the same name.
That you've also probably never heard of.
Over the Top is a movie about arm wrestling.
You look confused, beth T.
I gotta write that time and you look disappointed.
Beth S, you know what?
Give me some music and I'm gonna do my best to explain what the heck's going on here.
That's nice music.
Here we go.
I came of age in the 1980s.
This was the decade that gave us MTV, rubik's Cube, david Hasselhoff and what many film historians consider to be the golden age of arm wrestling cinema.
Because who can forget, in Friday the 13th, part 2, when Mark, a camp counselor in a wheelchair who is also the guy Vicky, another camp counselor, has the hots for Well, mark, he arm wrestles this joker who thinks he can beat a horny guy in a wheelchair.
Haha, fat chance random guy.
Mark wins and Vicky rewards Mark with the possibility of some sexy time.
But Mark takes a machete to the head from Jason Voorhees, sending Mark's wheelchair bouncing down a flight of stairs and later Vicky gets stabbed to death with a knife also special delivery, courtesy of Jason Voorhees.
Moving on.
Who can forget when Soda, as played by Rob Lowe, arm wrestled, steve, as played by Tom Cruise in the adaptation of SE Hinton's young adult novel the Outsiders?
That movie also featured Emilio Estevez, patrick Swayze, matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, c Thomas Howe Not in Blackface Diane Lane and Leaf Garrett.
Talk about a cast that old people find impressive.
How about Superman 2?
In general, zod and Ursa entered a diner in Texas, whereupon Ursa finds two old timers wrapped up in a game of arm wrestling.
The winner of the match, who is wearing overalls, a red plaid shirt and a cowboy hat, tells Ursa shift him buns right down here and he smacks his lap.
Ursa sits down and says let's just hold hands, inviting him to arm wrestle.
The redneck says tell me if this here tickles.
And then Ursa throws the plaid clad redneck right through the table.
Take that plaid clad redneck.
Hooray for Ursa.
Although later Lois Lane punches her in the face and kills her.
And who can forget in 1987's Predator, when Dutch Arnold Schwarzenegger and Al Dillon Carl Weathers meet up in some rural mercenary bar and they greet each other with a handshake that turns into a free-form, mid-air, no-table-needed arm wrestling match.
Who can forget that?
Probably almost everyone.
I would say, what about in 1984's Revenge of the Nerds, when a ragtag group of misfits from a fraternity and the adorably disgusting nerd, dudley Booger Dawson wins the arm wrestling competition during the Greek Games because his hands are covered in boogers and snot?
Also in that movie, the main nerd, louis Skolnick, wears a Darth Vader mask that conceals his identity and he pretends to be the boyfriend of a cheerleader named Betty Childs and he tricks her into having sex with him, thus committing rape by deception.
This all happens after the heroes of the movie, the nerds, sell nude photos of cheerleader Betty Childs, taken without her knowledge using a hidden camera that they illegally placed in her sorority house along with the bedrooms of multiple other women.
This movie also contains offensive Asian stereotypes, homophobia, hate speech and a heaping help in a heap of racism.
And after all that they made three sequels.
Hey, let's talk about arm wrestling in a less problematic movie, david Cronenberg's the Fly, which featured the grotesque transformation of Seth Brundle as played by everybody's favorite weirdo, jeff Goldblum.
That movie, seth Brundle gets his genetics all mashed up with a common housefly, giving Seth Brundle superhuman strength, which Seth Brundle uses to produce a compound fracture of a guy's wrist when an arm wrestling competition goes sideways, snap, crackle, pop that wrist right open.
But these are just mere moments in vintage 80's cinema that feature the ancient sport of arm wrestling.
There's just one filmmaker bold enough to bring to the big screen a movie that showcased the dedication, intensity and nobility of the mono-e-mono sport of arm wrestling.
And to tell that story we head to Israel.
Menheim Golan was born Menheim Globus on May 31, 1929 in Tiberias, a city on the sea of Galilee in what was then Palestine and is now Israel.
Later in life he was a pilot indie Israeli War of Independence and later changed his name to Golan after the state of Israel was established.
Following his time in the military, golan went to London to study drama and theater at the Old Vic Theater and later returned to Israel where he staged plays.
Looking to expand his interest in the dramatic arts, golan moved to the United States to study film.
In New York he landed his first job making movies as a production assistant for King of the Bee Movie Maker's Roger Corman on a film titled the Young Racers, where Corman and Golan formed a friendship.
Golan returned to Israel and began collaborating with his cousin Jormyn Globus, and they wrote and directed the 1963 film El Dorado.
One year later their production of Shala Shabadi received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film.
Good for them.
The cousins kept making movies.
In 1978, golan immigrated to the United States and one year after that Golan and his cousin purchased the struggling production company, the Canning Group Incorporated.
Golan and his cousin Globus made a practice of buying cheap scripts and turning them into low budget movies.
Remember he studied at the foot of Roger Corman.
They made movies across all genres of film, but in the 1980s there was a real market for cheap action movies and Canon Films was happy to meet that demand.
This all started when Canon Films announced that they were going to make a sequel to the 1974 film Death Wish that starred Charles Bronson.
Did they have the rights to make this movie?
Of course not.
But this is show business, baby.
You don't sell the steak, you sell the scissor.
Dino De Laurentiis, who co-produced the original Death Wish film, ultimately sold the rights to Golan and his cousin.
They brought in writer David Engelbach to write the screenplay.
Engelbach's previous writing credits were nothing.
He'd never written anything that had ever been produced into anything that resembled a movie.
But hey, it's Death Wish 2.
Engelbach writes the script, they make the movie and Engelbach goes to see the final film and he is appalled by what is on the screen.
Death Wish 2 was gratuitously violent and it had added rape scenes.
None of this was in Engelbach's original draft.
The movie comes out and guess what?
It's a success.
Of course it is Welcome to America.
It pulls in 2 million bucks for canon films.
Then it hit the home video market and made a ton of cash.
Then it went into heavy rotation on HBO and other paid movie channels and gained more popularity, despite the fact the critics overwhelmingly disliked the movie.
The success of Death Wish 2 led canon to crank out Death Wish 3 and Death Wish 4, the crackdown.
Not to be confused with the film Butt Crack or its sequel Butt Crack 2, the Crack is back to low budget films featuring a homicidal maniac who kills people with a weed eater.
Good luck finding copies of those.
But canon films was on to something Cheaply made action movies starring white guys with guns killing people.
Chuck Norris showed up to star in Missing in Action and later went on to star in that movie's sequel.
Well, it was actually a prequel.
Missing in Action 2, the beginning, which then led to a sequel of the original Bratac Missing in Action 3.
Canon films kept cranking out cheap movies, sometimes getting funding for a movie that was in production based on the speculation for a movie that would be made in the future.
They would just design posters for movies featuring images and actors that were just made up, and then they would get people to back those future movies to help pay off the budget of a movie that they were already working on.
Sounds like a Ponzi scheme Sell the sizzle baby, not the steak.
During the 1980s, canon films tapped into any fad that could come along and turned it into a movie.
The spike in popularity of 3D movies and the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark led canon films to produce Treasure of the Fall Crowns in 3D.
Conan the Barbarian was successful on the big screen, so Conan films made Hercules Hercules starring TV's Incredible Hulk Lou Ferrigno.
The popularity of breakdancing led to the film Break-In and its almost more famous sequel, break into Electric Boogaloo.
These movies were released in the same year, six months apart.
Canon cranked out some sexy movies too, including Lady Chatterley's Lover, mata Hari and Balero starring Bo Derek, and it was canon films that were primarily responsible for fueling the curious interest in ninjas in the 1980s, with films like Enter the Ninja and its sequel, revenge of the Ninja and Ninja 3, the Nomination, as well as American Ninja and American Ninja 2, the Confrontation.
Canon was all over the place, just cranking out mostly low budget movies that didn't have huge movie stars, in hopes of returning a buck or two on their investment.
And it wasn't until 1986 that Canon made it to the big leagues when they landed Sylvester Stallone to star as Lieutenant Marion Cobra-Cobretti in the action-packed movie Cobra.
Stallone at the time was riding high, having starred in Rocky, rocky II, nighthawks, rocky III and First Blood.
Stallone had a slight misstep here and there when he appeared alongside Dolly Parton in the romantic comedy semi-musical film Rhinestown, but he found his box office footing again with Rambo, first Blood Part II and Rocky IV both coming out the same year.
Who do you think you are the breaking movies?
Stallone was as big as a movie star could get in the mid-80s.
Around this time Stallone was offered the lead in a movie called Beverly Hills Cop.
Stallone read the script and decided it needs some changes, removing all of the humor and focusing more on the film's action.
In this rewrite, stallone renamed the lead to Axel Cobra-Cobretti.
He said that his rewrite of the movie would now include an opening that some said rivaled Saving Private Ryan in regard to human carnage, and the movie would end with Sylvester Stallone in a Lamborghini playing chicken with an oncoming freight train.
How does the train turn?
Oh, okay, the producers behind Beverly Hills Cop read these rewrites and they said thanks, but no thanks.
Your rewrite sounds like trash.
To which Cannon Film said did someone say trash?
Cannon Film signed on with Sylvester Stallone with his idea for a movie and created the film Cobra, which, when finished, originally received an X rating due to the excessive violence.
Cobra was directed by George Cosmatos, who was the director of Rambo First Blood Part II.
Huh, that makes sense.
Cosmatos and team toned down Cobra enough to get an R rating.
The movie comes out and it costs about 35 million bucks to make, and it pulled in 160 million bucks, making it the most successful Cannon Film ever.
And with the financial success of this film in the bank, producers were eager to make another hit film with Sylvester Stallone and Minheim Golan wanted to be in the director's chair for that ride.
In addition to his writing and producing duties with Cannon Films, golan regularly found time to direct about a movie each year, including the aforementioned Enter the Ninja.
He directed the romantic comedy Over the Brooklyn Bridge and the Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin action film, delta Force.
And when the opportunity to direct Sly Stallone in a movie that really tapped into Sly's star power and ripped off the sports theme of an underdog that was used in four that's right, four Rocky movies, Golan couldn't say no.
Remember this was Cannon Films.
Now it's important to note where Sylvester Stallone was in his career.
At this time he was just on the edge where every movie he made essentially turned out to be him playing Sylvester Stallone.
He was kind of the same movie star in every role.
I'm talking about movies like Tango and Cash Stop or my Mom Will Shoot, oscar Cliffhanger, demolition man, assassins, daylight it's all kind of the same character, but over the top preceded that, and in this movie he was really playing more of the every man whose only extraordinary power is arm wrestling.
In the movie Stallone plays Lincoln Hawk, who was called Hawk, or Hawks sometimes, because the script was sloppy and maybe the actors weren't professional or the director wasn't paying attention, or perhaps some combination of all three.
Golan and the Cannon team hired Sterling Siliphant to write the screenplay, telling him you know it's like Rocky, but with arm wrestling, and swap out the girlfriend with a kid.
It sounds like they're just following that playbook Barton Fink took to write that Wallace Beery wrestling picture.
Anyway, if Sterling Siliphant's name rings a bell, it's because he wrote the screenplay for the Swarm, the movie that was like Jaws but with bees, and reviewed on this very podcast back in season 16, episode 3,.
That was a very funny episode.
David Engelbach, if you're taking notes remember, wrote Death Wish 2.
He also got some screenplay writing creditors.
Well, this after he wrote and directed the canon produced film America 3000.
A film set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where a tribe of women rule and men are either feral or slaves.
Remember, this is a canon film.
Over the top would also featured Robert Loja as the rich, grumpy father-in-law who wants nothing to do with every man.
Sylvester Stallone, you may remember Robert Loja as the guy who played the oversized piano with Tom Hanks in Big, or perhaps from the 1999 commercial for Minute Made Orange Tangerine Breakfast.
Drink Beth S roll that beautiful juice footage.
Try some New Minute Made Orange Tangerine.
It's got calcium, Then I'm not drinking it.
Oh no, it's sweet, you like it.
I don't believe you.
Well then, who would you believe?
I don't know Robert Loja.
Whoa, Robert Loja.
Billy, your mother's right New Minute Made Orange Tangerine tastes great.
This guy has as much calcium as milk.
If you say so, Mr Loja.
Yeah, this is great.
Enjoy your breakfast.
New Minute Made Orange Tangerine with calcium.
Yeah, so that was the thing that was on TV back in the 90s.
Y2k had everybody nuts back then.
Let's move on.
Christina Hawke, the estranged wife in the movie, was played by Susan Blakely, who had had roles in the Towering Inferno and the fourth installment of those airport disaster series films titled Concord Airport 79.
David Mindl Hall came on to play Mike Sly Stallone's son in the movie.
He was best known at the time for being the white kid who sold drugs to Arnold and Dudley on a very special episode of Different Strokes that also featured a cameo by First Lady Nancy Reagan reminding American children to just say no to drugs.
Beth S, beth T, did you know that former First Lady Nancy Reagan went on a sitcom titled Different Strokes and told all the kids in America to just say no to drugs?
Well, she did.
And guess what?
That didn't work, because a lot of people love taking drugs.
By the way, beth S and Beth T don't do drugs.
Alright, moving on Bill Hurley, the movie's bad guy, if you can call him that, he was played by Rick Zumbwald, who was an honest to goodness, professional arm wrestler.
In as much as that can be a profession, zumbwald was also an actor.
He played the tattooed strong man in Batman Returns, a movie reviewed on this podcast, season 18, episode 3.
He has a long list of TV credits and he later went on to perform as a strong man in Cirque du Soleil.
Over the top was shot from June to August in 1986.
The movie features a military academy in Colorado, but that was actually shot at Pennoma College in Claremont, california.
Robert Loja, the rich grandpa in the movie.
He lives in a mansion that may look familiar to fans of the 1960 sitcom, the Beverly Hillbillies, a sitcom where no First Lady showed up to tell you to not do drugs.
They knew to stay in their lane.
Keep it out of politics.
It comes when I need to hear your preachy nonsense.
Don't do drugs, by the way, beth, that's Beth T, seriously don't do drugs.
All right, there were some scenes that were shot in Monument Valley, which we last visited in this podcast, with Thelma and Louise rolling along in their Thunderbird Golan.
The film's director and producer knew that this movie also needed a soundtrack that would sell a lot of copies, chock full of hit pop songs, so that they could make some more money.
Remember this was during a time when people bought soundtrack albums with hit songs on them that were inescapable through the constant repetitive airplay of these songs on the radio and on MTV.
The over-the-top soundtrack featured two hit songs, including Sammy Hagar's Winner Takes All and the king of the soundtrack Pop Hits, mr Kenny Loggins with Meet Me Halfway.
The soundtrack also featured singles from Eddie Money, asia Cheap Trick frontman Robin Xander and, of course, perpetual Norm MacDonald punchline.
Frank Stallone as much as Over the Top was marketed as rocky, but with arm wrestling it's really not that at all.
It's mostly just a road trip movie with a little arm wrestling thrown in here and there, which turned out didn't really matter because nobody really went to see this movie.
It hits theaters in February, over Presidents Day weekend.
And it came in fourth place, ouch, right behind number three, mannequin starring Andrew McCarthy and Kim Cattrall, about a guy who falls in love with a possessed department store Mannequin, weirdo.
Number two that week was Outrageous Fortune starring Beth Midler and Shelley Long.
Remember when Shelley Long could star in movies?
That was a long time ago.
And the number one movie that week was Oliver Stone's Vietnam War film Platoon starring Charlie Sheen.
Remember when Charlie Sheen could star in sitcoms?
Bet Nancy Reagan would never go to his sitcom.
Tell everybody don't do drugs.
It laughed her ass right off the set.
Let's get back to Over the Top.
The movie pulled in five million bucks opening weekend and ended up making around 16 million bucks overall, domestic and international.
Reportedly, stallone was playing 12 million to be in the movie, running the production cost to about 25 million.
Now look, I'm not that great in math, but it doesn't sound like this movie did too well financially.
This disastrous response was driven in part by the critical response, which was mostly not kind, as the majority of critics cited how it was a pale imitation of the Rocky movie formula, but only with arm wrestling Well duh.
Other critics said the movie was just a feature-length music video because it's one montage after another with a rock ballad playing in the background.
I cannot argue with that.
When the two iconic film reviewers Ciskel and Ebert discussed the movie's merits on their very popular movie review TV show At the Movies, the two film critics spent a notable amount of time discussing Sylvester Stallone's son Mike in the film Ghost of Roger Ebert.
What was one of the questions you had about the relationship between Sylvester Stallone and his estranged son Mike?
One of the questions that I had all during this movie was why Stallone didn't haul off and belt that kid all the way across the room.
Ghost of Gene Ciskel.
Do you think the film spends too much time on the relationship between Stallone and his young son, mike the kid?
occupies probably two-thirds of the picture and the kid is clawing.
Obnoxious, not a good actor.
Why don't you tell us how you really feel A movie review that encourages child abuse as a remedy to make it better and openly calls out a child actor for his terrible performance.
Kudos to you too.
You know, at the Movies with Ciskel and Ebert.
That's where Bo and I learned to review movies.
And speaking of Mr Bo Rand's role, what say we?
Get him in here to hold hands, slap on the strap and do a little sweaty palm wrestling.
Ladies and gentlemen, beth Esses and Beth Tees, turn those trucker hats around and let's get ready to fumble.
It's 1987's Father and Son 18-Wheelin Road Trip Movie.
Over the top and welcome to Pick Six Movies.
I'm Chad Cooper and, as always, I'm joined by the man with whom I settle most disagreements with aggressive hand-holding.
Mr Bo Rand's little boat.
How are you doing today?
I couldn't be more ready.
I've already turned my hat around.
The switch has been flipped.
I'm in Podcaster mode.
I'm a podcasting machine, Chad.
Did you put on the strap?
Did you strap it on?
Did you put your strap on?
I did, but that is unrelated to the podcast recording.
That's the only fan I'm running at the same time because, I like to combine my interests.
I know that you do.
This was a viewer submission, although technically it's a movie that I picked according to the logbooks here at Pick Six Movies.
But I don't like this movie very much and the word around the Pick Six Movies office, bo, is that you have a not-so-secret affinity for this horrible, horrible movie.
I do.
I don't think this is a good movie.
Let me say that from the beginning.
This is one of those things where I saw this movie a ton as a kid, and I like it because it reminds me of those summers spent just wasting time in the den of my house watching movies, instead of going outside into the hateful sun.
I like it for the same reason that you like that mole on your leg, which is not to say that it's attractive or even healthy, but it's always been with you.
And it's probably going to kill you someday.
This movie's terrible for two reasons.
Bo.
