Today, we celebrate Sylvester Stallone’s birthday with one of the most definitive montages of the 1980s. From 1982’s Rocky III (which was directed by Stallone himself), here is the famous Rocky/Apollo training montage.
Tag Archives: Sylvester Stallone
The Lords of Flatbush (1974, directed by Stephen F. Verona and Martin Davidson)
The year is 1958 and four Brooklyn teenagers, all members of a largely non-violent street gang called The Lords of Flatbush, have enough grease in their hair to start a city-wide kitchen fire. It’s their senior year of high school. Chico (Perry King) tries to hook up with a new, blonde transfer student (Susan Blakely). Butchey (Henry Winkler) makes everyone laugh and hides the fact that he’s secretly really smart. Stanley (Sylvester Stallone) deals with his impending marriage to Frannie (Maria Smith). Everyone has to grow up eventually but at least the Lords of Flatbush will always have their memories and probably their leather jackets.
Nostalgia films that were extremely popular in the 70s, as the baby boomers were already starting to mythologize their youth. Lords of Flatbush is very much about that nostalgia, leading to a film that feels sincere but which is also pretty predictable. With its coming-of-age storylines and its mix of drama and comedy, Lords of Flatbush owes an obvious debt to American Graffiti. The movie, like its characters, is likable but not exactly memorable. Today, it’s really only known because it featured early performances from Sylvester Stallone and Henry Winkler. Winkler got his signature role as the Fonz on Happy Days largely based on his performance as Butchey, though Butchey is nowhere near as cool as the Fonz. Pre-Rocky, this movie was Stallone’s calling card in Hollywood and he rewrote enough of his own lines that he got an additional dialogue credit. Stallone actually gives a pretty good performance, even if he is obviously closer to 30 than 18.
Stallone’s best scene is when Stanley is trying to buy an engagement ring and Frannie insists that he buy one that costs $1,600. For the first time, Stanley realizes that getting married means committing to something other than hanging out with his friends and working on his car. Stanley buys the ring but threatens the jewelry store owner afterwards, telling him to never show Frannie a $1,600 ring again.
The Lords of Flatbush is a film about the past but it’s mostly interesting due to the future of its stars.
#MondayMuggers presents FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1975) starring Robert Mitchum!
Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday June 2nd, we are showing FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1975) starring Robert Mitchum, Charlotte Rampling, John Ireland, Sylvia Miles, Anthony Zerbe, Harry Dean Stanton, Jack O’Halloran, Joe Spinell, and Sylvester Stallone.
FAREWELL, MY LOVELY finds Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe being hired by paroled convict Moose Malloy to find his girlfriend Velma, a former seedy nightclub dancer. All kinds of intrigue ensues as Robert Mitchum puts his droopy-eyed, world-weary spin on the famous detective!
So join us tonight for #MondayMuggers and watch FAREWELL, MY LOVELY! It’s on Amazon Prime. The trailer is included below:
Scenes That I Love: Sheriff Teasle Arrests John Rambo in First Blood
Director Ted Kotcheff has passed away.
Kotcheff directed a lot of classic films but perhaps the most influential was 1982’s First Blood. In today’s scene that I love, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is arrested by Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy). Teasle may think that he’s keeping his community safe and teaching Rambo a lesson about respecting authority but, needless to say, he’s making a huge mistake.
Billy Dee Williams in NIGHTHAWKS (1982)!
I love Billy Dee Williams. When I was a kid, I remember Florence from THE JEFFERSONS loving him. I also loved him as Lando Calrissian in the STAR WARS movies. I’m sure I had his action figure. As I got a little bit older, I started to appreciate his larger body of work in movies like NIGHTHAWKS with Sylvester Stallone and Rutger Hauer, and NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET with Robert Carradine. On his 88th birthday, I wanted to take a moment to celebrate Billy Dee Williams, and one of my favorite action movie scenes. This scene from NIGHTHAWKS features three unbelievably cool actors in their prime!
Enjoy, my friends, and Happy Birthday Billy Dee!!
Icarus File No. 21: Reach Me (dir by John Herzfeld)
The 2011 film, Reach Me, opens with a rapper named E-Ruption (Nelly) appearing on a morning show and talking about how, while he was serving a prison sentence, he read a self-help book called Reach Me. It asked him to consider whether or not his childhood self would be happy with his adult self. The book was written by a mysterious man named Teddy Raymond. No one knows who this Teddy Raymond is. He’s never appeared in public. People film themselves reading the book online and then upload to YouTube as a way of sharing Teddy’s wisdom. I honestly can think of nothing more annoying and boring than watching someone else read a self-help book but whatever. I live in Texas. The movie takes place in California.
Tabloid editor Gerald (Sylvester Stallone) takes a break from action painting to order one of his reporters, Roger King (Kevin Connolly), to track down Teddy Raymond. Roger wants to write the great American novel. He doesn’t care about self-help. He meets Teddy’s associates, Wilson (Terry Crews) and Kate (Lauren Cohan) and Wilson talks about how Teddy magically cured Kate’s stutter. Roger then wanders around the beach, asking random people, “Teddy Raymond? Are you Teddy Raymond?” Oh look! There’s a guy named Teddy (Tom Berenger) who reluctantly cures Roger of his smoking addiction by ordering Roger to yell at the ocean …. over and over and over again.
Collette (Kyra Segdwick) has just been released from prison. Reading Teddy’s book has inspired her to try to become a fashion designer. Collette’s daughter, Eve (Elizabeth Henstridge), is an aspiring actress who was earlier groped by a sleazy star named Keating (Cary Elwes). Collette and Eve literally crash their car into a car being driven by Wolfie (Thomas Jane), a sociopathic undercover cop who enjoys killing people and who goes to confession after every shooting. (At the start of the movie, he guns down Danny Trejo.) The alcoholic priest, Father Paul (Danny Aiello), refuses to hear any more of his confessions.
Meanwhile, wannabe mob boss Frank (Tom Sizemore) is upset because another mob boss, Aldo (Kelsey Grammer), doesn’t treat him with any respect. Frank sends two of his hitmen, Thumper (David O’Hara) and Dominic (Omari Hardwick), to kill a man who owes him money and to also shoot the man’s dog. Thumper has been reading Teddy Raymond’s book and doesn’t want to shoot the dog. Dominic realizes that his heart isn’t into the mob life so, taking the book’s message to heart, he calls Frank and says, “My heart’s not in it.”
(Don’t try that with any real mobsters.)
Eventually, all of the characters do come together. They don’t exactly come together in a plausible manner but they do all end up at the same location so let’s give the film credit for that. Let’s also give this film credit for leaving me seriously confused. I have no idea whether this film was meant to a parody or a celebration of the self-help industry. At first, I suspected that it meant to be a parody because all of Teddy Raymond’s advice was painfully shallow and the type of basic crap that anyone could come up with. I actually found myself losing respect for the people who claimed that Teddy had changed their lives. But at the movie progressed, I realized that I was supposed to take Teddy and his advice seriously. This was a film that I guess was meant to have something to say but who knows what exactly that was.
That said — hey, everyone’s in this movie! Director John Herzfeld was a former college roommate of Sylvester Stallone’s and, once Stallone agreed to appear, that apparently convinced a lot of other “name” actors to take the risk as well. There’s a lot of talent in this film but little of it is used correctly. Kelsey Grammer as an Italian mobster instead of the editor? Sylvester Stallone as the editor instead of the Italian mobster? Thomas Jane as a sociopath who has a girlfriend by the end of the movie, one who smiles and tells him, “Try not to shoot anyone?” Kyra Sedgwick as an ex-con? These are all good actors but just about everyone, with the exception of the much-missed Danny Aiello, is miscast.
It’s a true Icarus File. It was a just a little more self-aware, this would have been a Guilty Pleasure. But, in the end, self-help cannot help itself.
Previous Icarus Files:
- Cloud Atlas
- Maximum Overdrive
- Glass
- Captive State
- Mother!
- The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
- Last Days
- Plan 9 From Outer Space
- The Last Movie
- 88
- The Bonfire of the Vanities
- Birdemic
- Birdemic 2: The Resurrection
- Last Exit To Brooklyn
- Glen or Glenda
- The Assassination of Trotsky
- Che!
- Brewster McCloud
- American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally
- Tough Guys Don’t Dance
Scenes That I Love: Cobra Eats A Pizza
On this date, in 1941, future director George Pan Cosmatos was born in Italy. Cosmatos would go on to direct some of the most financially successfully (if critically lambasted) films of the 80s. He’s also credited as being the director on Tombstone, though it’s generally agreed that Cosmatos largely deferred to Kurt Russell on that film. (Cosmatos was a last minute replacement for the film’s original director.)
Other than Tombstone, Cosmatos is best-known for the films that he did with Sylvester Stallone. And today’s scene that I love comes from the 1986 film, Cobra. In this short but unforgettable scene, we get a chance to learn a little about the Cobra lifestyle. If you have any doubt that Cobra’s a badass, just wait until you see how eats a pizza. He handles his guns just as well as he handle a slice of Pepperoni and a pair of scissors. That Night Slasher better watch out!
#MondayMuggers – Why DEATH RACE 2000?
Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday December 2nd, we’re watching DEATH RACE 2000 starring David Carradine, Sylvester Stallone, Simone Griffith, Mary Woronov, Roberta Collins, and Martin Kove.
So why did I pick DEATH RACE 2000, you might ask? It’s pretty simple. I think it will be a fun movie to watch with a group. Unlike most of my choices, which are movies I’ve seen many times, I’ve only seen DEATH RACE 2000 one time before and it’s been awhile. I’m looking forward to seeing it again myself. I like that it’s a B-movie from legendary producer Roger Corman. That’s usually a good thing. I like that it’s directed by Paul Bartel. Bartel’s EATING RAOUL was one of those movies that helped me appreciate black comedy when I was growing up. I really like the cast, especially David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone. And finally, I like that it’s 80 minutes long. In today’s world where every film feels the need to be between 2 and 3 hours, I’ve grown to really appreciate movies clocking in at 90 minutes or less!
It’s on Amazon Prime and Tubi. Join us if you’d like!
#SundayShorts with NIGHTHAWKS!
Since Sunday is a day of rest for a lot of people, I present #SundayShorts, a weekly mini review of a movie I’ve recently watched.
Deke DaSilva (Sylvester Stallone) and Matthew Fox (Billy Dee Williams) are two badass New York City Cops. Wulfgar (Rutger Hauer) is one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world. When it’s suspected that Wulfgar is in New York City, DaSilva and Fox are transferred to an elite anti-terrorist squad, led by the British expert Peter Hartman (Nigel Davenport). Will they be able to find Wulfgar and stop him before it’s too late?
I’m a big fan of NIGHTHAWKS. The performances from Stallone, Williams, and Hauer are all excellent. Hauer is especially good as the terrorist, Wulfgar. He knocks it out of the park. The action is hard hitting at times, and the tension builds nicely throughout the film, leading to its audience pleasing conclusion. Definitely recommended for fans of action movies and the stars!
Five Fast Facts:
- Dutch actor Rutger Hauer was a huge star in the Netherlands when NIGHTHAWKS was made. This is his American film debut.
- Sylvester Stallone and Rutger Hauer clashed early and often while making NIGHTHAWKS. The first day on the set, Rutger Hauer had to film a violent action scene. While filming the sequence, Hauer was injured when a cable that would yank him to simulate the force of being shot was pulled too hard, straining his back. Afterward, Hauer discovered that the cable was pulled with such force on Sylvester Stallone’s orders. Hauer threatened Stallone that he would “break his balls” if he ever did something like that again. Reportedly, they clashed often on the film from this point forward.
- The director of NIGHTHAWKS, Bruce Malmuth, played the ring announcer of the All-Valley karate tournament at the end of THE KARATE KID. I was 12 years old when I saw THE KARATE KID, and I wanted to be the karate kid. It’s one of my favorite movies, leading to a lifetime crush on Elizabeth Shue.
- Reportedly, during the exciting subway chase sequence, Rutger Hauer continually outran Stallone, who is known for his competitive streak. This is one of my favorite sequences in the film, and Hauer does look extremely fast.
- If you’re looking for a reason to upgrade to the Shout! Factory blu ray…the Universal Pictures widescreen DVD omits the use of “Brown Sugar” by The Rolling Stones and “I’m a Man” by Keith Emerson. The 2016 Blu-ray release from Shout! Factory adds them back.
Scenes That I Love: Rambo Returns from George P. Cosmatos’s Rambo: First Blood Part II
On this date, in 1941, future director George Pan Cosmatos was born in Italy. Cosmatos would go on to direct some of the most financially successfully (if critically lambasted) films of the 80s. He’s also credited as being the director on Tombstone, though it’s generally agreed that Cosmatos largely deferred to Kurt Russell on that film. (Cosmatos was a last minute replacement for the film’s original director.)
Other than Tombstone, Cosmatos is best-known for the films that he did with Sylvester Stallone. And today’s scene that I love comes from the 1985 film, Rambo: First Blood Part II. In this scene, Rambo — having survived being abandoned yet again in Vietnam — let’s the CIA knew exactly what he thinks about their operation. Whatever else you may say about the film (and I certainly prefer the first First Blood to any of the more simplistic sequels that followed), this scene is pure 80s action.
If you ever meet James Cameron, remind him that he wrote the script for this film and see how he reacts.
Here’s a scene that I love:
Through the Shattered Lens 