Theme Song: None.
Interesting Dated References: Smoking cigarettes in a Wendy’s while employees bring food out to your table; Town names like Toledo and Akron doing extremely heavy lifting as punchlines.
Social Context: Despite appearances, there is not a single plot point about empowered women. We’re simply supposed to assume there’s an independent women’s wrestling league that can fill giant arenas across the nation whose stars still shuffle around in beat-up cars hustling for food.
Summary: Peter Falk, as tough guy wrestling manager Harry Sears, yells and rants his way through a grueling two hours of female wrestling in poorly-lit venues. Falk manages The California Dolls, a hot ticket item in some unnamed, arena-filling, nationwide wrestling league that somehow still functions like a small-town VFW wrestling league with mob ties.
I haven’t been this disappointed in a movie in a long time. The trio travels from town to town eating food and sleeping in motels while Falk rants and rants about wrestling and wanting to make it big. And the wrestling sequences are miserable.
The big showdown finale is, I crap you negative, 35 minutes long.The whole thing seemed to have only a loose script idea (up and comers go after the establishment) and was then padded to hell. Falk is a true gem, but this one drops the ball. Get it? Ball? Marbles?
Worth Mentioning:
– I’m sure some terrible person with nothing better to do will point out to me that this was filmed during such-and-such wrestling show and features some obscure female wrestler, but I don’t care.
– Directed by the legendary Robert Aldrich. There were plans for a sequel to take place in Japan, but those ceased as Aldrich died shortly thereafter.
– Yes, there is female mud wrestling in this movie.
Poster and Box Art: All the posters for this movie are awesome and contributed to my heightened expectations.
Seriously, doesn’t this look like it’d be an awesome movie? It’s not.