- Directed by Shawn Cain
- Starring
- Al Snow
- Mike Ricker
- Chuck Williams
- Barry Ratcliffe
- Bobcat
- Executive produced by Ilia Zavialov and Merylin Moggle
Since I often begin these reviews with some kind of confession, you won’t be surprised if I do so now: I was never into pro wrestling, not even in its heyday in the ‘80s. Somehow, I always liked my scripted good-and-evil melodramas to be competent. Watching obviously staged and poorly choreographed bouts strained my suspension of disbelief further than a pair of leopard-print spandex pants, and the scenery-chewing histrionics of these non-thespians outside the ring made William Shatner seem like a model of method acting.
As you can imagine, then, Ultimate Death Match was torture for me.
Filmmaking tip #1: Always begin your movie by showing your audience how much you respect them.
The premise is this: Wrestling promoter Jake Reed (director Shawn Cain, who gives himself a “special guest star” credit) has lost his license because of a death in the ring during one of his televised bouts – though it was from a heart attack, so I don’t know what the big deal is. He’s thus hit on a new way to keep his boat afloat: Ultimate Death Match, a no-holds-barred tournament streamed pay-per-view on the internet, with the promise of a death in the final bout.
Now, that’s a serviceable premise, if not terribly original. Professional fighters forced into underground to-the-death matches are so common among action flicks they almost qualify as their own subgenre, and “look what can be found on the internet” horror flicks are almost as common.
The Beast vs. the Incredible Bulk.
But here’s where it falls down: the movie from this point, five minutes in, is almost entirely the broadcast wrestling bouts. Imagine one of the great baseball or football or basketball movies – heck, imagine one of the great golf movies – if all you saw during the movie was the televised coverage of the games, complete with announcers who feel that their job is to fill every moment with commentary and banter. Imagine The Natural or The Blind Side or even something like Bloodsport composed of nothing but game time footage. Got that image in your head? Now replace one of those real sports with pro wrestling. Or rather, semi-pro wrestling.
So it’s a whole movie set in a small “arena” — a wrestling ring and about thirty extras for the audience – with two roving video cameras for coverage, and two MCs, Frosty (there’s no cast-to-character list in the closing credits, so…) and Double-R telling us what we’re seeing and repeating ad nauseum about the brutality on display and the promise that someone will die before the night is out. The contestants all showcase all of the worst qualities of the pro wrestling performers – talking smack about other contestants before the match, wandering around the ring during the match to let their opponents line up theatrical and obviously pulled blows – without the charisma (!) of the real pro wrestlers. Or, in most cases, the body definition; these guys mostly have the physique of bar brawlers, a physique which doesn’t go well with shirtlessness and spandex knickers, minus all the moves.
Can I get a “yee-haw” from the audience?
For a moment, there seems to be a hint of a penumbra of a plot, in the form of a protagonist: Pauli Ventura, a Hispanic wrestler in his forties who enters the ring in a muscle tee, blue jeans, and work boots. He says in his pre-game interview that he’s doing it for the money so he can get back together with his family. We’re never given any more details than that, but gosh the MCs like him – much more than The Beast, who is supposedly more brutal than any of the other contestants, though we never see any evidence of that when he fights. He’s tubbier, though; that must count for something.
Aha, we think, it’s all going to come to a showdown between Pauli and the Beast. Pauli and the Beast each make it through the qualifying rounds and the semi-finals – and thank goodness there are a couple of quick KOs to break the monotony of the other interminable matches that last ten minutes or more – and are supposed to face off in the “death match,” where someone is supposed to die. (I know, you already know that. But at least I’m not repeating it as much as the MCs.)
SEE a man pass a kidney stone before your very eyes!
But as he’s heading to the ring, Pauli is handed a drink by the promoter’s right hand man. “It’s electrolytes!” Uh huh. Before he even gets into the ring, Pauli is weaving, whereupon he’s double-teamed by the Beast and the Russian Python, a massive wrestler who got eliminated earlier. They beat Pauli within an inch of his life and knock him out of the ring to be carried off. But then word comes down from promoter Jake Reed: There’s still going to be a death! The Beast and the Python have to fight it out to take the kitty!
And so even that mirage of perfunctory drama melts away, and we’re left with two men we really don’t care about fighting to the death. I kept waiting to find out the “stunning twist” behind this setup, but there isn’t one. Pauli disappears from the movie when he’s carted off by the doctors.
It’s one of those covert FBI field offices, cleverly disguised as your mom’s basement.
Interspersed through the first half of the movie, an FBI agent sits in the worst approximation of an FBI office in the history of cinema, keeping tabs on the streaming fight in case there is, actually a death. He doesn’t pop up for the whole second half until the end, after there’s a corpse left on the mat. Wow, they actually killed someone! And he says, “We’ve got a murder to solve.” I don’t know if “solve” is the right word for it, since he and twenty-seven million website viewers saw it happen in real time. On the other hand, since homicide isn’t a federal offense, he doesn’t have to “solve” the murder anyway.
Ultimate Death Match is overstuffed with the four Ps of pro wrestling: Posturing, Pulled Punches, and the convenient Pauses that let one wrestler move another without resistance into position for an attack. Even if you’re one of those people whose suspension of disbelief is so strong that you can actually watching professional wrestling without milk snorting out your nose, this movie will cure you of the willful cognitive dissonance necessary to remain in the audience. These pro-wrestler-wanna-bes wouldn’t last a minute in an Ultimate Fighting tournament, or even your average barfight; the idea that they’re a credible threat to one another in a fight to the death simply beggars the imagination.
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 1
- breasts: 0 (not counting he-boobies)
- explosions: 0
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0
How do movies like this one make money? Are review sites like this one the main way they promote themselves?
don’t shoot the messenger, James.
No, I’m actually asking.
From what I’ve gathered about this movie (mostly in the last 24 hours as its fans have come out to defend it and thus to claim my sexual inexperience — I’m not quite sure of the logic there), it’s mostly marketed directly to wrestling fans. UDM cost $6000 to make and it’ll gross several times that, possibly by an order of magnitude or two.
I wonder if the most reliable way to make money on a movie, then, is
a) make it really cheap.
b) make it about something that has fans, but few movies.
So the ideal movie might be something like a drama set around the world of slot-car racing, with lots of loving shots of top-line slot car tracks.
Although for all I know there’s a huge scene of such movies.
PS Then make it a comedy, because audiences are more tolerant of low budgets in comedies.
You’re a brave man, Shumate. This had to be painful.
One must make sacrifices for one’s art.
Hello I’m Shawn Cain I made this film, I had to come by and check out all the excitement. Nathan, there are 40 million wrestling fans world wide, Japan pulls 100 thousand ticket buyers for every wrestling match at the Tokoy Arena, Arena in South America sale out every friday night. Why, the story lines are straight forward, and those you climb into the ring risk there lives. Nathan you started this review (I use that lightly, it’s not a review but more of a rant) insulting the fans. If you would have posted this type of a review about Star Trek people would hunt you down, Why do you think the fans of this genre are any less. Nathan “sacrifices for ones art” your a little full of yourself son. Nathan don’t make fun of people, just because you think your the smartest guy in the room, does not make you any more or less of an ass than you already are. James all sport movies do well because there is a built in fan base. James Comedy doesn’t do well over sea’s . I see you took down everybody negitive review of your work, me, I leave them up because i have nothing to hide.
Let’s break things down, Shawn:
1) You want a rant? How about taking a look at your fans who posted here or here– you know, the ones who infer that because I didn’t like this, I must have never had sex or something. I spelled out exactly why I didn’t like the movie; if that qualifies is as a “rant,” it’s news to me.
2) You do realize that you just compared your fans to Trekkies, right?
3) The “sacrifice for one’s art” line was a joke (I know comedy doesn’t sell well overseas, but you should acquaint yourself with it nonetheless); my regular readers know I often review movies I don’t like, and they enjoy those reviews the most.
4) I know you’re probably older than I am, but I’m a forty-year-old father of four; if you won’t call me “son,” I won’t call you “geezer.”
5) I have taken NOTHING down; I have nothing to hide. The only comment I didn’t allow through is one that was stuck in the moderation cue for a website about a book I’ve written which has nothing to do with this review; one of your fans was trying to poke fun at that book without reading it. You may hate the fact that I criticized your movie, but at least I saw it first; that’s more than the level of behavior that some of your fans exhibit.
6) Yes, yes, of course, I must therefore be an ass if I don’t like your movie or agree with your fans. At least I know where they learned their debating skills. Odd, though, that with so many ticket buyers and such supporting you, you’re so threatened by a negative review on a niche website.
If you want me not to display my opinions on your movies, just tell your distributor to stop sending me screeners. I promise I won’t cry.
It sounds like the problem with the movie is that it’s about the game and nothing else. As you said in your review of the silly Double Dragon video game movie, imagine how hard it would be to make a movie about a game and nothing else–not about the players, for instance, who might actually have interesting lives and personalities outside of the arena, but just the game. I guess what we’re seeing here is the very kind of movie that would result if that game happened to be pro wrestling.
Oh yeah well TICKET SALES!!!1! You r thus refutted!!
He thinks you’re ranting?
Hang on…nearly blew out a kidney trying not to wet myself from laughter.
It’s a good thing Jabootu didn’t review this…
(Please don’t think I’m knocking Ken in anyway, he’s part of my holy trinity of bad movie review sites – Badmovies.org, Cold Fusion, Jabootu – Father, Son and the fearsome Holy Ghost.)
I was going to disect Mr. Cain’s post, but I fear it would simply look lack-luster in the light of your own fearsome literary skills. Not to mention thread hi-jacking is bad form.
But man it’s tempting!
Now I’m tempted to send the DVD to Ken. Just cuz.
I triple dog dare you!
(I have long embraced my Eeee-vil nature and appreciate it in others.)
As a wrestling fan, I’m embarrassed to read that wrestling fans flamed you for giving this movie a negative review. I thought your points were valid and in fact your review is useful to me in deciding whether or not this movie would be to my taste. I like the storyline in wrestling more than the actual wrestling, and it sounds like this movie is more matches than story. I’d be better off with No Holds Barred or Ready to Rumble.
I actually have a videotape in my “to be watched” pile about slot car racing, but it’s not fiction or drama; it’s just footage of slot cars. (It only cost 50¢ and looked very 1980s, so I bought it for the aesthetics.) So the low-budget slot car movie market remains untapped AFAIK!
So you’re volunteering to be my tag-team partner if Cain comes after me, right?
I’ll be your valet and distract the referee while you sneak a foreign object into the ring.
Fortunately, there’s a folding chair on my Swiss army knife.
Recently a friend/reader came across this and then requested I review it. They did not watch it of course. I’ve watched Wrestling since I was very young so I suppose they thought it’d be funny for me to review it. I had never heard of it and so looked up info on it and (clearly) found this place.
Despite the thorough review as to why I probably shouldn’t (or maybe because of the fact that I shouldn’t)I suppose I’ll have to watch it.
If anything we watch so our readers don’t have to!
Really digging this place by the way.
People like you and I, we are the Lovecraftian protagonists sacrificing our own sanity for the safety of our fellow men. Keep the faith!
B Movie Brigade if you haven’t already, you should also peruse Badmovies.org and Jabootu.net.
Bear in mind that even Cthulu treads lightly when in the realm of Jabootu!
So little time so many good reviewers out there…
And yet, even with our stalwart band of reviewers, there are still too many bad movies made for us to keep up.
Ask Shawn Cain about Jake The Snake Roberts. Jake was to do a film for Shawn’s “Down The Rabbit Hole Productions” and never saw one dime.
Jake was very unhappy.
I’d love Shawn to come back and tell us that story.
;)
I see Shawn Cain never came back for this one.
Shawn ripped off A LOT of wrestlers.
I’d love to hear him refute this and I’d welcome the chance to slap that fraudulent hack around.
Although a line of broke wrestlers wanting their paychecks from his movies might wish to go first.
Yeah.
It’s easy to have a budget of 6K and profit when you bail on paying your talent and claim it will come later after the “distribution deal”.
The wrestlers worked a show essentially and Shawn stiffed them.
Jake got it worse.
Come back Cain.
Unfortunately, the wrestlers owned money would have to get in line from crew members and cast that he screwed over before them. Some got it worse than Jake. He is black listed in film so he turned to wrestling.
Take a look at his history: criminal record for burglary in Washington State. Public records. He threatens people with their life.
The more noise you make, the better to keep him from doing this to more people.
He’s a con artist. Karma will come one day.