Hulk Hogan's Debut Vehicle, 1989's No Holds Barred Established the Grappler as a Uniquely Hopeless Actor
Welcome, friends, to the latest entry in Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. It’s the career and site-sustaining column that gives YOU, the kindly, Christ-like, unbelievably sexy Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place patron, an opportunity to choose a movie that I must watch, and then write about, in exchange for a one-time, one hundred dollar pledge to the site’s Patreon account. The price goes down to seventy-five dollars for all subsequent choices.
I’ve written before that the best way to get me to fast-track your Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 selection is to choose something that appeals VERY directly to my inner thirteen year old. It helps to choose a movie I actually saw when I was thirteen, like 1989’s No Holds Barred, Hulk Hogan’s debut starring vehicle and the late Tommy “Tiny” Lister Jr.’s star-making film.
Lister Jr. made an indelible impression on me as a thirteen year old. He was an American version of Dolph Lundgren’s Ivan Drago from Rocky IV, an unstoppable killing machine so intimidating that he even terrified the macho likes of Hulk Hogan’s Rip Thomas.
He seems nice.
Like Lundgren’s iconic Russian badass, Lister Jr.’s Zeus is a glowering, scowling, perpetually enraged brute who would prefer to never speak at all, and express himself exclusively through physical violence. When Zeus does speak here it’s invariably in monosyllabic threats.
Lister was famously a towering titan of a man, a six foot five, three hundred pound Colossus but in No Holds Barred he’s filmed from below in a way that makes him seem much bigger, like a ten foot tall, thousand pound man-God.
Also like Ivan Drago, Zeus is intentionally inhuman, otherworldly, more monster than man. In a devastatingly effective performance, Lister Jr. plays Zeus as a heel who lives to hurt people, who has no other purpose in life than to cause pain. Zeus doesn’t read magazines or go to movies by himself in the afternoon or play with his cat or any of that jazz: he just destroys.
Lister Jr. does not wink at the audience for a second to let them know he’s in on the joke. Instead the ubiquitous tough guy character actor is scarily invested in making Zeus the biggest badass ever to grace a movie screen, literally and figuratively.
The future Friday star delivers a legitimately great performance in No Holds Barred but it’s not the kind that wins awards or critical huzzahs. Rather it’s the kind of insanely committed heel turn that gets you literally hundreds of similar roles as hulking henchmen and blustery bad guys.
Lister Jr. doesn’t even show up until a half hour in but the moment he does Hulk Hogan’s movie instantly becomes a Tommy “Tiny” Lister Jr. movie the Fifth Element co-star was nice enough to let Hogan appear in.
Name a more iconic duo!
Where Ivan Drago powerfully embodied American’s Cold War-era fear that Russians were hyper-disciplined Uber-mensch out to destroy soft, decadent westerners and soft, decadent western civilization, Zeus represents the racist fears of bigots who see black men as terrifying, amoral, lawless and deadly bogeymen.
In a star-killing performance, Hogan plays WWF superstar Rip Thomas, who is pretty much just Hulk Hogan by a different name.
Rip is so popular that Brell (Kurt Fuller), the conniving head of the failing World Television Network, decides that the key to his network’s survival involves either signing the popular wrestler or destroying him.
Fuller delivers an absolutely majestic performance despite having some of the worst dialogue ever committed to film. Fuller was given crumbs that he made a goddamned meal out of.
Brell can’t stop referring dismissively to Rip as a “jock ass.” First he sneers of Rip “I want that jock ass on this NETWORK!” Later he complains bitterly to his executives, “Every time this jock ass decides to strip down to his sweet nothings WE EAT IT!”
But that somehow is STILL not enough. When Brell tries to buy Rip’s services by giving him a blank check and he refuses, the bad guy inquires apoplectically, “Are you saying my money isn’t good enough for you? I find that a little hard to swallow, jock ass!”
No Holds Barred was written by a TV and movie writer and producer named Dennis Hackin whose most impressive credit is probably writing the 1980 Clint Eastwood vehicle Bronco Billy but you could be forgiven for assuming it was written by a ten-year old Hulk Hogan super-fan who thought wrestling was real.
The movie’s portrayal of the television business is similarly child-like in its naivety. According to No Holds Barred, the way TV works is that a bunch of executives pitch impossibly vague ideas like “high concept sitcom” and “prime time game show” and then if those ideas are good then the network rockets to first place instantly but if they’re bad then the network ends up in last place like World Television Network at the beginning of the film.
The only idea Brell is excited about involves either piggy-backing on Rip’s extraordinary popularity or killing him and everyone he loves in vengeance. So Brell dispatches sexy employee Samantha Moore (Joan Severance) to seduce Rip into joining the Dark Side but she’s so blown away by his non-existent charm and ostensible goodness that she instantly falls in love with Rip even though most of their early interactions consist of Rip leering shamelessly at her body.
When that doesn’t work Brell starts a televised competition called Battle of the Tough Guys that launches Zeus to super-stardom as its seemingly unstopppable, unbeatable champion.
To further antagonize Rip Zeus beats up Rip’s brother Randy (Mark Pellegrino) so badly that he ends up in a wheelchair, leading to a climactic showdown to determine who truly is the toughest guy around.
No Holds Barred tries to convince us that Rip is a great guy because, as he indignantly proclaims at one point, “The “Rip character” wants you to know that his main outside interest is his charity work” but all available evidence suggests Rip is a huge asshole, a sexist, narcissistic bully who takes great joy in beating the shit out of anonymous heavies and scaring a limo driver so intensely that he shits himself.
When Rip asks him what the horrible smell is he whines, “Dooky” and Hogan bugs out his eyes to let us know that the dooky is, in fact, very stinky.
Hogan does most of his acting with his eyes. He bugs out his eyes to show that he’s angry. He bugs out his eyes to show that he’s concerned. He bugs out his eyes to express determination as well as joy and excitement. Pretty much all he does is smirk and flex and bug out his eyes.
Hogan delivers a performance pitched to the cheap seats in an arena wrestling match rather than the audience for a movie.
The future sex tape star is upstaged by Lister Jr. and Fuller at every turn. The towering behemoth and in-demand character actor have surprisingly explosive chemistry. Brell gets a seemingly sexual charge out of seeing Zeus beat the holy living shit out of people on his behalf. It’s as if they’re two sides of the same person, with Brell as the oily ego and Zeus as the rampaging id.
Like Lister Jr., Fuller really throws himself into the role, positively luxuriating in its larger than life villainy. When Brell and a pair of his flunkies, including future Oscar nominee David Paymer, go to a redneck wrestling bar and one of his unctuous underlings asks him which of the fighters he likes best, he replies, “All of them. They’re ALL scum!” with just the right note of ironic appreciation.
Brell gets a death befitting his epic greatness, sneering at a triumphant Rip at the end of his big showdown with Zeus, “Stay away you jock ass!” before being fatally electrocuted.
Rip smiles warmly at the sight of a business rival dying a painful, horrible death and the credits roll.
No Holds Barred is a terrible, terrible, terrible movie that I thoroughly enjoyed for reasons that have nothing to do with its underachieving star and everything to do with its overachieving heavies, a dastardly duo that created unforgettable apogees of B-movie evil in the most forgettable and disposable of contexts.
Hulk may have been the name above the title and the marquee attraction but No Holds Barred belongs to its bad guys.
Fuller and Lister would never be a fraction as famous as Hogan, of course. For decades Hogan reigned as one of the most famous men alive but Fuller and Lister Jr. have the considerable consolation of having more impressive film careers than Hogan, who managed to headline a few more tepidly received action vehicles, most of which I have written about for this site, before the industry figured out he wasn’t a movie star.
Lister Jr. and Fuller might not have been bankable movie stars either but they’re ultimately something more special and important: eminently dependable character actors who could be counted upon to liven up anything they appeared in, even wonderfully terrible dreck like this.
Pre-order The Fractured Mirror, my next book, a massive, 600 page exploration of the long and distinguished history of American movies about the film industry at https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Check out The Joy of Trash: Flaming Garbage Fire Extended Edition at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop and get a free, signed "Weird Al” Yankovic-themed coloring book for free! Just 18.75, shipping and taxes included! Or, for just 25 dollars, you can get a hardcover “Joy of Positivity 3: Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” edition signed (by Felipe and myself) and numbered (to 50) copy with a hand-written recommendation from me within its pages. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind collectible!
I’ve also written multiple versions of my many books about “Weird Al” Yankovic that you can buy here: https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop
Or you can buy The Joy of Trash from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Trash-Nathan-Definitive-Everything/dp/B09NR9NTB4/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= but why would you want to do that?
Check out my new Substack at https://nathanrabin.substack.com/
And we would love it if you would pledge to the site’s Patreon as well. https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace