Over the Top (1987)

Years after Rocky Balboa punched his ways into our hearts and John Rambo shot his load in a few guys, Sylvester Stallone brought to the world his cinematic ode to arm-fucking.

Stallone plays Lincoln Hawk, a doe-eyed trucker, a father to a son he should have left fatherless and a part-time arm-fucker. Or arm-wrestler as this film likes to call it. When Hawk’s ex-wife starts dying of something (the story doesn’t go into great detail), she wants her runaway husband to rekindle a relationship with their uptight son and show him how to be a truck-driving, sweat-drenched tuffy.

But the kid’s grandfather (Robert Loggia, seen in a similar yelling role in Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie) will stop at nothing to get his grandson back, even if it means sending thugs out to kidnap him. The grandpeppy doesn’t like Hawk one bit. It’s a shame because if he had seen Cobra, which was released a year earlier, grandpeppy would’ve realised the man he hates is the coolest guy about town.

Driving across country to get to the World Handholding Championship in Vegas, Hawk tries connecting with Michael by teaching him a few confusing lessons.

I’m not a parent, but forcing your child to arm-wrestle an older teenager in a dingy roadhouse and then making him drive a massive rig to prove that you’re smarter than him is bad parenting, right? The kid’s dying mother (Susan Blakely) didn’t seem to think so.

Along the way Hawk’s name changes to Hawks and then back to Hawk again. Some think this is a continuity issue. But I like to think that there were scenes cut out where our hero decides to go on a walk to deed poll, on two occasions.

David Mendenhall as the son douses his performance with cheese. He’s annoying and if I were Hawk I would’ve told the kid I would see him in another ten years, but I’m not Hawk so we’re stuck with Michael for the whole film. For better or for worse their on-again-off again relationship is the heart of the story.

The interviewer in this clip creepily suggests Over The Top is a ‘love poem to children.’

What they don’t mention in this interview is when Stallone first heard Mendenhall’s voice in Stallone’s favourite cartoon Rainbow Brite he wanted Mendenhall cast as his son. Nothing on the internet can disprove this so it must be true.

Over the Top is directed by prolific-producer Menahem Golan. He produced most of the Death Wish movies, Delta Force, The Apple and over 200 other films. Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night) and Stallone are credited as writers. Here they successfully stamp the Rocky formula onto this arm-wrestling action drama.

I don’t want to get bogged down in cast and crew, plot, facts, or the use of Giorgio Moroder’s sappy supermarket-friendly compositions. What makes Over The Top worthy of a Mondo Exploito post is the arm-wrestling. It’s ridiculous to use arm-wrestling as an integral part of a high-budgeted Hollywood film. Fucking ridiculous. If you don’t know what I mean, just take a look an example of said sport:

Watching Over The Top I wondered why more films don’t feature arm-wrestling. Specifically more Stallone films. How much better would the Expendable movies be if all those 80s and 90s beefcakes sat around screaming in each other’s faces while arm-fucking? Or witnessing John Rambo settling his differences with a good old-fashioned handholding contest? A shitload better, that’s how much.

This is what makes Over the Top’s final 30 minutes amazing. The hilarious displays of machismo and homoeroticism. The muscles ballooning out of crop tops and teeny tiny singlet tops. The close-ups of screaming constipated faces. The slow-motion groans. Let me share with you some of the highlights:

Of course Hawk/Hawks wins both the contest and his son. But after watching Over the Top it left me with a few unanswered questions. Hawk/Hawks and Michael plan to start their own trucking business, but does Michael ever go back to school? He is 12 years old for fuck’s sake. What happened to Grizzly, the arm-wrestler who drank the oil? I hope he’s OK. And why wasn’t the Cobra sequel ever made?

Availability: Over the Top is readily available on DVD and blu-ray. The action figures are somewhat rarer.