Film Review: ROCKY IV (1985, Sylvester Stallone)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 91 minutes.

Notable Cast or Crew: Sylvester Stallone, Brigitte Nielsen (RED SONJA, COBRA), Talia Shire (THE GODFATHER, OLD BOYFRIENDS), Burt Young (CHINATOWN, ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA), Dolph Lundgren (UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE), Carl Weathers (PREDATOR, ACTION JACKSON), Tony Burton (THE SHINING, THE BLACK GODFATHER), James Brown as "The Godfather of Soul."  Mr. T and Burgess Meredith in archival footage.  Featuring the song "Double or Nothing," by Kenny Loggins.

Best one-liner: "Get ready for the next world war."

ROCKY IV.  The Cannon Film that never was.  That's sort of my thesis statement, anyway.  And it fits– it's closer to COBRA in every regard than it is to ROCKY I or II.  Written and directed by The Stallion himself, it is a pure, uncut, and punch-blasting rumination on the Cold War, probably the best since FAIL-SAFE or THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD.  At least it's the best one that co-stars Carl Weathers.    

Anyway, this movie's been discussed to death by plenty of others, but I'd like to offer my own humble observations into the mix.  So let's look at a few of the little things I like best about ROCKY IV.  What the hell.

#1.  Vanity plates.  If you recall, Marion "Cobra" Cobretti had one:  "AWESOM 50."  Rocky Balboa's is "SOTHPAW," because he's left-handed.  

Now, here's my question:  would "SOUTHPAW" not fit, or does "SOTHPAW" represent one of Rocky's poignant (but mostly hilarious) battles with literacy?  Or does it represent a member of the production's poignant battle with literacy?  The character of Rocky has changed so much by this time, however (he's basically 'Cobra,' now as I've mentioned), that the literacy Public Service Announcement from ROCKY II seems long-forgotten.  

#2.  Dolph Lundgren.

Where everyone else has put forth their own thoughts on "If he dies, he dies" and "I MUST BREAK YOU!," etc., etc., I'd like to draw some attention to Dolph's flattened coiffure, and the fact that he was dating Grace Jones at the time (after starting off as her bodyguard).  

He's such a blank, one-dimensional villain, that he might as well be a live action video game boss.  So given this less-than-rich source material, what did Dolph infuse his performance with?  Allow me to float the idea that Ivan Drago– "I MUST BREAK YOU," haircut, killer punches, and all– could very well be based on Grace "Queen Bitch Jungle Mother of New York" Jones.  At least I hope.

#3.  Also, I love that Rocky puts a little pin-up of Drago on his bureau mirror, FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF CRUMPLING IT LATER.

#4.  The bizarre editing.

There's montage after montage here, and I'll use one in particular as an example.  Rocky hops into his car, revs the engine, and drives into the dark, dark night, mourning times gone by, and meditating upon the existential menace of Ivan Drago.  We get Lynchian flashes of Drago, starkly lit against the darkness. We flash sporadically between shots of Drago and the car, as if there's an absolute madman in the edit room.  It made me think of the insanely edited montages in COBRA (where it was flashes of the axe-wielding gang instead of Ivan Drago!), which got me thinking.  While both movies do have co-editor Don Zimmerman in common, I get the idea that Stallone himself– being the auteur, and all– was in the edit-room, micro-managing the hell out of all of it and preserving his vision.  Which conjures a second question:  was he 'in character' as Rocky when he did it?

#5.  Apollo Creed's entrance.  

I love Carl Weathers.

Getting to see him prance about in an Uncle Sam costume in front of a papier-mache bull while Fosse dancers and showgirls alike cavort on a stage with fire and glitter and James Brown–

–yes, I said James Brown–  well, in short, it's something to behold.  Which leads me to– *spoiler alert*

#6.  Apollo Creed's death.

You know, I hate to see Carl Weathers go.  And he's giving it his all in this scene.  Then there's Stallone, throwing a towel in slow motion and doing that one kind of sad, kind of dazed, mouth-agape look that he does when he's required to show emotion.  Let's just say that if I were a lot drunker and 12 years old, this scene could have been imbued with a tragic beauty.

#7.  You know what would be cooler than Rocky climbing the steps at the Philadelphia Art Museum and raising his fists in triumph?

How'd he get up there anyway?  I don't see any grappling hooks or anything.  Also– maybe this is where Stallone got the inspiration for CLIFFHANGER?

#8. Brigitte Nielsen.

Again, this should be an honorary Cannon Film.  First Stallone (OVER THE TOP, COBRA), then Dolph (MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE), and now Brigitte Nielsen (COBRA).  She's sort of a stock Communist villain here, which means she mostly delivers icy stares punctuated by the occasional asshole sneer.  She's not too bad– but then again, she's not given the chance to pose and lark about with high-fashion robots.  Which is sort of sad, I think.  Nope, there's not even a single robot in sight.  No robots here.  None at all.

#9.  The Robot.

Had you going for a second there, didn't I?  Of course there's a robot.  He wrote 'em into COBRA for a reason, too.  What that reason was, I'll suspect we'll never know, though I can't help but wonder if it involved the mad typing of deadline frenzy as Sly hid in the basement from Brigitte Nielsen and imagined a better life: one with more robots.  Anyway, Stallone gave birth to SICO the Robot, who makes his first appearance as a birthday present from Rocky to Paulie (Burt Young).  SICO makes some gender shifts throughout (with the intent, I imagine, of eliciting laffs), delivers cakes, dances in the driveway, offers telephones, cleans up the aftermath of Redi-Whip shenanigans, and roots for the USA in international sporting events.  I can't even begin to describe how oddly out-of-place this feels in a ROCKY movie.  But I guess robots were the "new normal" for ROCKY movies in 1985.  SICO reminds me a little more of BB in DEADLY FRIEND than Johnny 5 in SHORT CIRCUIT or R2-D2 as it were, if we're talking marketable movie robots of the era here.  But that didn't stop him from touring with James Brown throughout the 80s.  I did a real-life spit-take when I read that.  Apparently SICO had his own Screen Actors' Guild card, too.  Pretty terrific.  Here's a video of SICO's first appearance:

HAPPY-BIRTH-DAY-PAUL-IE.  I love how quickly and stiltedly he says that line, and how it matches rhythmically with the awesome synth music.  And SICO is not some gimmicky, throwaway moment– he becomes a bona fide supporting character.  Plus, there's the line, "Yo, can you turn your robot down, please?"

#10.  Gorbachev slow clap.  So it's the end of the film, and Rocky is giving an inspirational speech about East-West relations.  There's already been a Gorbachev look-a-like (minus the birthmark) present in the arena, and I was struck with the thought that the only thing that could make this scene better is if Gorbachev nods his head in appreciation, slowly comes to his feet, claps once, claps twice, claps a third time, and then legitimately starts a barrage of clapping and nodding his head in a slow burn of enthusiasm, prompting everyone else to start clapping and nodding their heads in appreciation of Rocky's Philly-streets wisdom.

AND THEN IT HAPPENED!  

Amen, Rocky, Amen!  Four Berlin Wall-felling stars.

-Sean Gill

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Film Review: MOONWALKER (1988, Jerry Kramer, Colin Chivers, & Jim Blashfield)

Stars: 3.9 of 5.
Running Time: 93 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Michael Jackson, Joe Pesci, Sean Lennon, Kellie Parker, Brandon Quintin Adams (THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS, THE SANDLOT). Music by Michael Jackson, score by Bruce Broughton (THE MONSTER SQUAD, TOMBSTONE). Visual effects supervised by Hoyt Yeatman (THE ROCK, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, THE ABYSS). Special effects supervised by Kevin Pike (INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, THE LAST STARFIGHTER). Claymation by Will Vinton (THE CALIFORNIA RAISINS, THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN). Written by Michael Jackson and David Newman (BONNIE AND CLYDE, SUPERMAN, WHAT'S UP DOC?).
Tag-line: "On his soul, a king of music. On his heart, a king of beats."
Best one-liner: "There, get him! Come on, get him! Kill him, KILL HIM! Let's see how cool he is now!"

As I watched this film, my mind grappled with the perverse concept that we live in a universe where MOONWALKER could, and does, actually exist. Ultimately, upon holding the physical disc in my hands, feeling the weight of it, and confirming that fact with nearby witnesses, I was forced to conclude that the preceding 93 minutes were no mere fever-dream, but in fact a very real encounter with a very real movie. But what is it, exactly? A sci-fi flick? A musical? An anthology piece? A biopic? An auto-biopic? ...A horror omnibus?

I would surely not call it a horror omnibus unequivocally, but consider the following images and then tell me that it is not a horror movie:







So, now that I've adequately shoehorned MOONWALKER to fit my horror omnibus series, let's look at the film proper: MOONWALKER is utter outlandishness, a collage of ego and confusion, a self-portrait of a man-child, and a bizarre paean to the films of Steven Spielberg. In a nutshell, it's E.T., PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, TRANSFORMERS, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, LISZTOMANIA, BACK TO THE FUTURE, and A HARD DAY'S NIGHT bundled together into a mélange masquerading as a Michael Jackson biopic.

As the film washes over you it relentlessly defies all rational thought, and as soon as your reeling brain has a tentative handle on any one of these peculiarities, a dozen more pop up to take its place, like so many moon-walking hydra heads:

Why are we crosscutting between Michael and Chernobyl, Mother Teresa, atomic bombs, Martin Luther King, and the Camp David Accords?


Why are there so many dogs in suits?


Why did claymation Michael Jackson just transform into claymation Tina Turner, and finally into claymation Pee-Wee Herman?


Why is it that the live-action approximations of creepy claymation are about 900 times scarier than the already creepy claymation?

And why is 'The Noid' there?! I hate The Noid!

Am I supposed to be thinking about HAUSU?


Why Texas?


Is that seriously a 'spider-wipe' transition?


Let me stop myself right there. Allow me to back up a moment and try to explain exactly what is happening here in one massive stream-of-consciousness run-on sentence hopefully worthy of William Faulkner:

Michael Jackson walks onto the screen, his feet tingling and sparkling, he performs in a series of concerts, crosscut with historical events and a fanciful best-of compilation that feels somehow as if MASTERPIECE THEATER were hijacked by the alien counterparts of the California raisins



and Michael is leading the troops off to battle but what battle and against who, it must be

electricity! do they seek to battle neon lightning? no matter

and then the rats descend and so many rats, rats! rats! rats!, but why? and


at least it made the papers, but
then the children with false facial hair are reenacting BAD, crotch grabs and all, and I am appalled but I am still watching


who's bad? they ask us
not I
I hope

and I get this same feeling when I am watching adults dressed as babies, dancing in diapers, why oh why?, you wish that I had never seen these things, but some things cannot be taken back, no matter how much you wish

and then child-Michael is man-Michael and he is chased by claymation hordes who want an autograph and perhaps a pound of flesh, but what is a pound of flesh to a creature made of clay? sprung and sculpted from the loins of the earth as it were,

and Michael is sincere, and Michael is happy, like a child, I have rarely seen such genuine happiness, and then he is a bunny, Michael is a claymation bunny, and he drives on and on, he escapes the Clay-parazzi, then divides with his bunny döppelganger, his bunnyganger, and they have a dance-off in Monument Valley (or is it that desert from the Looney Tunes?),

and Michael gets ticketed for dancing because there is no moonwalking allowed in the desert, it's bad for the plants but do not linger because

Michael is leading us on a tour of the tabloids, the carnival of his life, and Bubbles is in chains

we pass through the Elizabeth Taylor shrine, it frightens me, Liz, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and all that, and then dancing with the Elephant Man's bones, is that insensitive?, I wonder

(apologies to Joseph Merrick) but then he dismantles the funhouse of public perception and strides away like Gulliver, a titan amongst us mere Lilliputians, but suddenly Michael plays soccer with kids in a field, including Sean Lennon, and I wonder


who taught him to play soccer (football?), but the fun doesn't last long,

because they wander, Goonies-style, into a secret lair, the lair of Joe Pesci who likes bugs and drugs, bugs and drugs, bugs and drugs,

is that a ponytail or a cowlick, who cares he eats peanuts just the same

he has a master plan to write himself into the history books (getting kids high on bugs and drugs) but Michael stands in his way and for that he must die but Michael escapes the assassins' bullets and turns into a car (not a DeLorean) but it turns back time anyway because he IS the car, I suppose, and so it's the 1930's

and I guess the producers of Broadway's MEMPHIS were taking notes, detailed, detailed notes,

and we go into 'Smooth Criminal' and Michael crushes a cue ball with his bare hands

only dust remains

and then they dip in those patented shoes (not merely patent-leather, mind you, patented leather), you see Michael was an inventor, too, but the dancing doesn't last because Pesci naps a kid

he just wants to get everybody high, man, you know, some good drugs, bugs and drugs, bugs and drugs, but that doesn't fly with Michael, who is actually a giant robot who can fly (would have liked to have seen him in ROBOT JOX), and the heavens open, like when they open the ark in RAIDERS


and the transformation is complete and he lays waste to the armies of darkness (like the ark of the covenant) and then he flies back to outer space (like E.T.) and the children are crying

'Thank you, Michael!' they squeak from melancholy throats but it's not over till it's over and Michael comes back and takes them to a concert where he performs 'Come Together' which was a song by the Beatles, you remember who the Beatles are, don't you?,

and Sean Lennon righteously shakes glowsticks in time with the music and then there are three sets of closing credits because a lot of people worked on this movie and it goes on for about six minutes, and there is African folk music and some outtakes from 'Smooth Criminal' and then finally Michael winks at us, a knowing wink, because we know the secret now, the secret that he is a robot and the world is safe now because Pesci was exploded, safe from bugs and drugs, bugs and drugs and whatever else, forever and amen, the end.

-Sean Gill

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