Tag Archives: Hulk Hogan

Suburban Commando (1991, directed by Burt Kennedy)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

After screwing up a mission to save the leader of his planet from the intergalactic gangster Suitor (William Ball), Shep Ramsey (Hulk Hogan) is ordered to take a vacation.  When Shep gets mad and accidentally damages the controls of his spaceship, he’s forced to hide out on Earth while his ship repairs itself.  After stealing some clothes from a biker, Shep rents a room from Charlie (Christopher Lloyd) and Jenny Wilcox (Shelley Duvall).  Charlie is an architect who hates his job, his boss (Larry Miller), and a malfunctioning traffic light in the middle of town.   Charlie doesn’t trust Shep but when Suitor comes to Earth in search of his number one foe, Charlie and Shep are going to have to work together to save Charlie’s family.

Suburban Commando was originally envisioned as being an Arnold Schwarzenegger/Danny DeVito film.  Schwarzenegger and DeVito decided to do Twins instead and Suburban Command was (eventually) made with Hulk Hogan and Christopher Lloyd.  The idea behind the film had potential but the film itself never comes to life, thwarted by a low-budget and a cast that generates little in the way of chemistry.  Things start out well when Hogan is in outer space and the film parodies Star Wars but, once Hogan goes on vacation, the story crashes down to Earth in more ways than one.  Hogan was more of a personality than an actor and it’s impossible to see him as being anyone other than Hulk Hogan, even if he is flying through space and wearing intergalactic armor at the start of the movie.  Hogan getting angry in space is funny because space is not where you would expect to find him.  Hogan getting angry in the suburbs just feels like a half-baked sitcom.  Lloyd is too naturally eccentric to be believable as someone trapped in a go-nowhere job.  It’d hard to buy Christopher Lloyd as someone who would be scared to tell off his boss or who would need an alien warrior to come down and show him how to loosen up.  There’s a lot talented people in the cast but the ensemble never really gels.

This was the last film to be directed by veteran filmmaker Burt Kennedy.  Kennedy was best-known for his westerns, including Welcome to Hard Times, Support Your Local Sheriff, and Hannie Caulder.  He was not known for his wacky comedies and this film shows us why.

Thunder In Paradise (1993, directed by Douglas Schwartz)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

R.J. “Hurricane” Spencer (Hulk Hogan) is a former Navy SEAL who now lives in Florida and makes his living with his superboat, Thunder.  Spencer’s best friend, Bru (Chris Lemmon), is also his business partner.  There’s nothing that Spencer and Bru can’t do.  This movie starts with Spencer taking the boat down to Cuba so he can rescue the family of a dissident and bring them back to Florida.  It ends with his using his boat to save the lives of his wife (Felicity Waterman) and his stepdaughter (Robin Weisman) from some treasure hunters who have made the mistake of kidnapping them.  Spencer’s marriage is one of convenience.  His wife needed a husband to get her fortune and he needed a rich wife to keep his business going.  His father-in-law (Patrick MacNee) doesn’t trust him but Spencer’s a top-notch American hero.

Though it was initially released direct-to-video, Thunder in Paradise was actually a pilot for a syndicated television show that started a few months later.  Both the film and the show were from the producers of Baywatch and it shows with the emphasis on the beach, the bikinis, the corny humor, and the cartoonish villains (led, in this case, by Flash Gordon himself, Sam Jones).  Of course, it’s a Hulk Hogan movie so none of that is really a negative.  Hogan might be playing Hurricane Spencer but he’s really playing himself and there’s enough self-aware humor to make Thunder In Paradise entertaining in a way that No Holds Barred definitely was not.  (I liked that, during a fight on another boat, there just happened to be a wooden chair sitting on the deck that Hogan could break across his opponent’s back.)  Chris Lemmon and Hulk Hogan are a surprisingly good team (Lemmon’s brain provide a needed  contrast to Hogan’s bawn) and Carol Alt is on-hand as the owner of a beach bar.  Naturally, a handful of Hogan’s fellow wrestlers shows up as well, Brutus Beefcake, Jim “The Anvil” Neidhardt, Giant Gonzalez, Jimmy Hart, and others.  As a fan of The Avengers, I was happy to see Patrick MacNee, even if his character was just a typical distrustful father-in-law.

Corny, silly, dumb, and more fun than it probably should be, Thunder In Paradise is an entertaining product of its time.

No Holds Barred (1989, directed by Thomas J. Wright)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In No Holds Barred, Hulk Hogan plays a professional wrestler who is best-known for his mustache, his thinning blonde hair, and for ripping his shirt in half when he climbs in the ring.  Hulk Hogan is playing himself except that everyone in the movie calls him Rip Thomas.  Why is Hogan renamed Rip Thomas?  It seems strange because No Holds Barred features “Mean Gene” Okerlund and Jesse “The Body” Ventura as themselves and there’s nothing about Rip that’s any different from Hulk Hogan’s own wrestling persona.

Rip is the World Wrestling Federation Champion and is loved by fans across the globe.  Rip may be fierce in the ring but outside of the ring,  he loves children and is devoted to looking after his younger brother, Randy (Mark Pellegrino).  Tom Brell (Kurt Fuller), the evil owner of World Television Network, wants to harness the star power of Rip but, when Rip refuses to sign with WTN, Brell goes his own way and hires ex-convict Zeus (Tiny Lister) to star in The Battle Of The Tough Guys.

Rip still wants nothing to do with Brell, not even when Brell sends Samantha Moore (Joan Severance) to seduce him.  In fact, Rip is such a beacon of goodness that he brings Samantha over to his side.  But when Zeus puts Randy in the hospital, Rip has no choice but to seek revenge in the ring.

No Holds Barred is a movie with an identity crisis.  It’s a pro wrestling movie that was made to capitalize on Hulkamania and a lot of the humor was meant to appeal to the kids who were a huge part of Hogan’s fanbase but it’s also a movie in which people die, Samantha is nearly raped, and Randy is crippled by Zeus.  The movie lacks the sense of fun that has made professional wrestling a worldwide phenomena.  The most surprising thing about No Holds Barred is that Hulk Hogan has very little screen presence.  I don’t think anyone would expect him to be a great actor but he also shows little of the charisma that made him a phenomena back in the day.  Especially when compared to the ferocious Tiny Lister, Hogan is just boring.  Maybe that’s the difference between Rip Thomas and Hulk Hogan.

David Paymer has a small role in No Holds Barred, playing a nervous television executive.  Out of the cast, Paymer was the only one who later went on to be nominated for an Oscar and Jesse Ventura was the only one to later be elected governor of a state, at least so far.  Hulk Hogan’s only 71.  He’s still got time.