No matter how low your expectations are going into this absurd late 80s Hulk Hogan vehicle, it's quite likely to limbo right under them.Hogan is the "star", but he actually gets very little screen time, disappearing for large chunks of the film while the focus is on the villain of the piece played with a "Hey, it's a paycheck" glee by Kurt Fuller. When he is on screen, Hogan struggles playing a character that is more or less the same one he'd played for nearly a decade in the WWF.None of this would've mattered much had the film at least given us some entertaining wrestling moments and perhaps a few good montages set to cheesy rock music, but it can't even seem to do that right.'No Holds Barred' is awful even by the standards of low budget late-80s wrestling movies, of which it may be the only one.

Hulk Hogan, Kurt Fuller, Joan Severance and Tommy 'Tiny" Lister star in this 1989 action film. Hogan plays wrestling hero, Rip who gets offered a deal by corrupt, TV executive, Brell (Fuller) to join his network. He turns him down and Brell gets Rip to fight a dangerous ex-con, Zeus (Lister) on his new program. Soon, Rip and Zeus go head to head with each other in a big wrestling match. Severance (Lethal Weapon) plays Samantha, a businesswoman who falls for Rip. This isn't bad, even though there's some goofy & corny moments, Hogan and Lister (Friday) are good and Fuller (Scary Movie) plays a great bad guy as usual. I recommend this.

I typically do not make absolute statements about anything in life. That being said, I am making an exception today. No Holds Barred is by far the best piece in all of cinema history...nay, in all of history. From the day that the first caveman impersonated his neighbor, to now, nothing has surpassed NHB. If Shakespeare was alive today, he would weep at its goodness and likely commit suicide knowing that he could produce nothing that would approach its greatness.The movie stars Hulk Hogan, the man who single handily won Operation Desert Storm for America, by defeating both Sgt. Slaughter and the Iron Sheik. Hogan's performance was so great, that when he was automatically offered the Oscar the day after release, he gave the statue a figure-four leg lock and said to give it to Daniel Day-Lewis.Hogan aside, which it is very difficult to dismiss him at all, this movie also has the greatest single scene in all of cinema. When Hogan, who is at the end under the constant barrage from Zeus (yes, Hogan did destroy a god), he looks up at his brother for encouragement. His brother, who is paralyzed from an earlier attack from Zeus, moves a single pinky. That is all Hogan needed to "Hulk" up. That line is still the most quoted line in history. I mean, think about it. We all move our pinkys everyday. The rest is history.

A thinly veiled attempt to push Hulkamania to the film going non-wrestling fan. What could be worse than Hogan in the movies? Bad actors in the wrestling ring, and this film produced both, as Tiny Lester made his way to the WWE that summer in the mother of all promotional blunders. See the dictionary under Oops. As a card carrying member of the stupid kids of the world paid to see this in theaters and when I came out I immediately checked into H.A. - Hulkamaniacs Annoynimous. I am proud to say I have been off the Hulk for 17 years now and have never had a craving since. Since this was made to bring in more fans to the juggernaut that was the WWE in Hogans hey day one has to wonder if there weren't more fans like me who turned to other past times that did not poison ones mind like this offense to celluloid did, such as huffing gas or Russian Roulette.