“Great, great. I should’ve stayed in the music business.”

Drake’s rating: Rock and wrestling? Why, that’s madness, I tell you!

Drake’s review: The term ‘kayfabe’ is widely connected with the world of professional wrestling. In general, it is meant to convey that there’s a show going on and everyone involved knows it, but they’re nevertheless going to buy into the fact that what they’re seeing and doing is real.* That is, the wrestlers will growl at each other in interviews, threaten each other with bodily harm in the wrestling ring, and then attempt to inflict said harm with kicks, punches, and slams, and the audience for said spectacle will accept these shenanigans as real-life events.

And for years kayfabe was adhered to with an almost-religious fervor by wrestler and fan alike. A local wrestler who had had his leg “broken” in a match better be seen wearing a cast around town, because failure to do so meant a risk of breaking kayfabe, and that was a danger to the careers of wrestlers and promoters alike.

So here we have this thing that is, not to say “fake” since the athleticism is authentic and the threat of injuries is very real, but at least pre-scripted. So, kind of like the movies, right? I mean, we all want to buy into Indiana Jones dodging snakes and punching Nazis, even though there’s a screenwriter somewhere pacing it all out and a director finding just the right shot and a stuntman substituting in for Harrison Ford for the more difficult physical sequences. But we’re buying into the end experience regardless of the fact that none of it is real, and everyone involved in it is relying on us doing just that.

Which makes the mixture of pro wrestling and movies such a hard sell. They each rely on their own particular brand of storytelling to get the audience involved, and both rely as well on that audience accepting outlandish stories and sometimes creative violence to move their stories along. But the movies are a bit more open about their process, while for decades pro wrestling held up a dark curtain with KAYFABE scrawled across it in bold letters to keep the ingredients of their matches a closely guarded secret.

So you have one medium that’s scripted interfacing with another medium that is also scripted, but the latter is hiding that fact like a state secret and imploring everyone to not sneak a peek behind the curtain and ruin it for all involved.

Now while kayfabe may have fallen by the wayside in large part in recent years, in 1986 it was still in full force. Oh, the cracks were there, but they always had been, and audiences had happily ignored any irregularities in favor of enjoying their ring-based soap operas. But in the ‘80s wrestling was on a huge upswing after some years in the weeds, and wrestlers like Hulk Hogan were starting to become household names. Even better, music sensation Cyndi Lauper had become involved with a World Wrestling Federation event, “Rock ‘n’ Wrestling,” which drew a massive share in the Nielsen ratings for MTV and legitimized pro wrestling as a pop culture event.

Which meant there was a market for rock & roll wrestling, right?

Well, sure, in 1984. If it involved Cyndi Lauper. And Hulk Hogan. And Mr. T got involved at some point as well. And also Liberace. Yes, Liberace.

Look, pro wrestling is weird, man.

But Body Slam is bereft of Lauper, Hogan, T, and Liberace, so it feels just like what it is: an attempt to cash in on a craze that had come and gone already with the guy who lost to Hogan during the real events subbing in for the Hulkster as the hero of the story. So on the good side, that means we get “Rowdy” Roddy Piper (They Live) as wrestler Rick Roberts. Rick is a pro wrestler and a single dad, and hires Harry Smilac (Dirk Benedict, Ruckus) as his manager when Harry helps him to negotiate a contract. Harry thinks that Rick is a musician, however, and doesn’t learn that he’s now a wrestling manager until agreements are made.

Still, Harry is broke, on the verge of eviction and in debt to a loan shark who has his two humongous bodyguards (Afa and Sika Anoa’i, who themselves wrestled as the tag team the Wild Samoans) dismantle Harry’s car. Since beggars can’t be choosers, Harry finds himself setting a reluctant foot into the wrestling business as the manager of Roberts and his tag team partner Tonga Tom (real life wrestler Sam Fatu, another member of the Anoa’i family).

But standing in the way of success for Harry, Rick, and Tom is Lou Murano (real life wrestling manager Lou Albano) who manages the tag team champions the Cannibals. Murano doesn’t like Rick or Tom, he doesn’t like anyone challenging his team, and he really doesn’t like a newcomer like Harry showing up and acting like a bigshot in the world of wrestling. The stage is set for a big showdown, but the problem is that Murano has pull within the business and blacklists Harry and his team so that they can’t book any big shows.

Needless to say, this isn’t how pro wrestling really works, but within the confines of Body Slam it does give Harry the impetus to come up with a new idea. An idea that not only includes Rick and Tom, but also a band that Harry’s been trying to book. An idea that merges rock and roll and wrestling.

So, the idea that Cyndi Lauper & Co. came up with a few years before, in other words. But at a much smaller scale and with a rock band made up for the movie.

And no Liberace, of course.

Body Slam can be fairly fun at times, but it still runs into the problem that almost every other wrestling film does** as it tries to keep kayfabe, so the wrestling action you’re seeing on the screen isn’t anything more than you would catch on TV or at your local arena. In fact, it’s considerably less, since for the majority of the movie you only get snippets of matches and the requisite montage. There’s a subplot involving Harry managing events for a politician and getting involved with Tanya Roberts (The Beastmaster), but you can’t help but wish that Rick and Tom had gotten more screen time since Harry’s fast-talker shtick wears thin fairly quickly.

Still, there are several wrestler cameos and Billy Barty shows up as another wrestling manager so Body Slam can be a good time regardless of its flaws.

But, still. No Liberace? I don’t know what they were thinking.

*There’s much more to it, and in fact author Patrick W. Reed has written a whole book about it called Kayfabe: A True History of Professional Wrestling. I’m severely condensing his 500+ page tome into a basic explanation here.

**Including The Iron Claw, a flick that came out as recently as 2023!

Intermission!

• Wow, Harry has a car phone! In his Ferrari. Which gets repossessed.
• In case you’re forgetting this is the ‘80s, Harry bright pink tie is there to remind you.
• Tanya Roberts shows up in an electric blue swimsuit and now I have your attention, don’t I?
• It’s interesting that the story went with a wrestling tag team instead of a singles star. I’m curious what the thought process behind that was.
• Dirk Benedict in drag because someone though that would be funny.
• Travel montage!
• The band is called Kick, by the way. Thought I should mention that.
• Well, I made it to the end and there was no Liberace. *Sigh.*