The Big Whatsit

The third and fourth instalments of the Rocky series are truly beyond criticism. Slating them is a bit like having a go at James Blunt, in the sense that whatever you say, they’ll still brush themselves down and go happily about their way, confident they are impervious to critical bullets. Much like the odious Blunt, both were massive successes in their day, going on to make well over $100m apiece and thrilling their audiences. They might have been rubbish, but they were good rubbish.

Rocky III was such a big hitter (ahem) that in Redcar, they put on a special showing at the Coatham Bowl whilst the Regent Cinema underwent one of its regular closures. I was ten, went with all my mates, and no doubt afterwards we re-enacted all the best scenes, making that magnified hitting sound for every blow struck. ‘I’ll be Rocky, you can be Clubber, you’re Apollo, and you can be Thunderlips.’ ‘Er, no ta, mate.’ In my considered opinion, this entry is actually the best of the lot, because it’s pure, unadulterated fun. Apart from Mickey’s plot-convenient demise, the underdog emotion-tugging is pretty much cast to one side as Balboa tries to overcome the punching machine that is Clubber Lang. And it’s Lang who’s the best thing about the film, because he’s played by Mr T.

I know it’s easy to say such a thing in a post-ironic, Channel 4 kind of way, but I mean it. Mr T (unimpressive real name - Lawrence Tureaud) is perfect casting. Apollo Creed, the ‘opponent’ of the first two movies, is modelled rather obviously on Muhammad Ali. If that’s so, then Lang is George Foreman, or perhaps Sonny Liston. Either way, he’s the antithesis of Creed, a nasty, ugly wrecking ball. Nothing he says is without bile, and he snarls. A lot. All the time. If there was an award for on-screen snarling, Mr T’s portrayal of Clubber would be the standard everyone would have to meet, an impossible standard in my eyes. He’s a heavyweight challenger of nastiness, so bad he makes Mike Tyson look like Frank Bruno, and you know he’ll be almost impossible for Rocky to defeat. In short, he’s fantastic, delivering a crazed, over the top performance that adds everything to the unreality of the Balboa world.

All this was played to the bestselling ‘Eye of the Tiger’ by Survivor, something I think I might have bought on a dodgy K-Tel compilation LP. The group went on to record ‘Burning Heart’ for its sequel, Rocky Ivy (copyright my Dad, and probably yours too), but this time they kind of got lost in the extended soft rock soundtrack of the movie. It’s hard to see past James Brown’s scintillating turn, performing ‘Living in America’ whilst wearing a fetching jumpsuit, for many kids their first glimpse of soul music’s Godfather.

How Stallone got away with slipping an entire James Brown show into his movie, I’ll never know. But then, by this point the series was all about indulgence. There’s a 20-minute segment between Adriaaaaaaaaaan begging Rocky not to fight, and his tussle with Russian champion, Ivan Drago, where we watch clips montages and scenes of our hero training, all to a string of pulsating rock tracks. And then it’s worth remembering this all happened in 1985, the dawn of the MTV era. Stallone made nothing more or less than a film for the music video generation by churning out an extended music video of his own. Forget the easy political stereotypes of the piece. Don’t be insulted by them either. You’re not here to hate the Commies and love the Yanks, but to soak in the all-style-no-substance of Ivy.

I loved it when I first caught it, and it remains a bit of a guilty pleasure to this day. If there is a weak point (apart from, er, all the other rubbish bits, like the cheap slaying of Creed, Adriaaaaaaan and Paulie having nothing to do, the entire dynamic between Rocky and his son, that bloody robot, etc, etc), then it’s Ivan Drago, played with the cardboard cutout quality of Dolph Lundgren. Poor Dolph. All he has to do in Ivy is shoot off mean stares, whether that’s at Apollo, at Rocky, at his management, at the floor, and at the poor chump playing Gorbachev who looks a bit like the Premier but not too much because his face is hidden in shadow. Presumably cast for his sheer hugeness (Balboa comes up to his enormous chest), Lundgren is the first time a Rocky ‘villain’ is turned into an abject cartoon character, a one-dimensional bad guy who exists to be downed in the final act. Unfortunately, it’s not the last, but more on Tommy Gunn later…

Even more disappointingly, both films reside within the Anthology DVD set without much in the way of extras. Stallone commentaries would be nice, along with some ‘Making Of’ material that explored the reasons for their very existence, and naturally an hour-long documentary on Mr T. They deserve better, yet the dedicated disc of ‘Extras’ happens to be some hastily scrabbed together stuff on the first movie, as though it’s the only one that matters. I get the impression even their maker is a bit apologetic about them, quietly making them part of the series because he has to, otherwise they won’t be in numeric order, without bothering to give them any further treatment. A real pity, as the two episodes are enormous slices of incredibly daft fun, and a bonus for fans is the chance to see Brigitte Nielsen when she was worth the mither.