Hell, the Viceroy told me this was gonna be an art movie

The subheading of this blog, "Men across the nation search for greatness in action films" was penned as a sweeping and dramatic nod to the fact that the contributors are far flung. More realistically it should say "Men in the central time zone plus two in the western part of L.A. get giddy about shitty movies". This would more accurately reflect the identities of the participants (until we acquire a friend in the east) as well as the purpose of the quest.

So, anyway, I'm not sure where Sean lies his head after drinking a cube of delicious Old Mil Light, but the Viceroy and I may be the most closely located pair of contributors to this blog. This offered me the opportunity to snag "Italian Stallion" from him this morning before it need be returned to Cinefile. I won't belabor many points, as he covered it all quite nicely just a couple days ago, and the movie hasn't changed aside from perhaps being more grainy and poorly lit than it was when he put it on the spin cycle in his video-playing machine. In the interest of full disclosure of my habits, and further discussion of a momentous piece of film, however, I record here some supplementary thoughts.

* I would update "panty hamster" to "panty chinchilla". That, or those are some very ferocious hamsters.

“I’ll Be Velvet Mouthed On Your Shank of Love”

A conventional wisdom of the people of the United States of America is that action stars are born, not made. They believe the likes of Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone came out of the birth canal with a headband already tied around their head and a chip already planted firmly on their shoulder. Their state of affluence was sitting there next to the curl bar just waiting for them to claim. To which I say, “Hark!” This is America. No one rides for free. Van Damme, Lundren, Statham—all God-fearing Americans—had to start out on the bottom rung and pick themselves up by their bootstraps while doing a chin up to get to where they are today.

Arnold Schwarzenegger started out his storied Hollywood career in a feature called, Son of Hercules. The previously mentioned Jean-Claude Van Damme has an uncredited but crucial moment in the critically acclaimed prequel to the groundbreaking film, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, titled Breakin’. Heck, even Ronald Reagan started out as a humble B-movie actor before becoming an action hero.

Sylvester Stallone is no different. Broke and homeless, the Man That Would Be Cliffhanger took a gig that paid $200 (US) for two days work (ET). The final product was, The Party at Kitty and Stud’s. And it was the start of Stallone’s storied career.