...All the Marbles (1981)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Fresh and Exciting

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Three persons in search for a dream scour the back roads and interstates of the mid-western, United States searching for fame and money. Professional Wrestling Manager and ex-Teacher Harry Sears(Peter Falk) and his two lovelies, ex-girl friend Iris (Vicki Frederick) the brunette twenty years younger than Harry is constantly gripping about getting substantial venues to show her wears in the Wrestling Profession.The other partner in this sexy tag team is the soft spoken blonde Molly played by Laurene Landon. Riding town to hamlet Harry Blares his opera music in his car and tells the Girls where there next match will be. Bookings become scarce and Harry relegates, basically humiliates the two woman into a mud-wrestling match which leaves Iris questioning her own self worth as she breaks down and cries which motivates their crusty manager. Harry finagles his way to Reno for a possible winner take all tag team title match. I was drawn to this story because I'm a Peter Falk fan. He doesn't show emotion and stays on an even keel despite terrible odds. This movie has a beginning, a middle and a happy ending which will not disappoint, Weird vehicle for both Falk and Director Aldrich but it some how caught my interest. Both Fredericks and Landon (Our two lady Stars) convinced me that they were really Professional Wrestlers by their moves in the squared circle. Kudos to the consultants that trained the two. It's not a chick flick but more a wrestling movie with the Columbo touch!

"All The Marbles" was director Robert Aldrich's final movie, and it's kind of an odd chapter in Aldrich's career (though it's likely he was planning to make more movies between this one and when he died.) It's a pretty grungy experience, for one thing. Quite often it depicts the lives of female wrestlers as having a lifestyle that few people would envy - risking injury, sleazy motel rooms, etc. But the movie does remain pretty interesting for most of its almost two hour running time. The three central characters are pretty interesting, not without flaws, but people you will root for and hope will find happiness and the fame they deserve. My only real complaint with the movie is that the final wrestling match goes on for far too long; it could have been significantly cut down. But other than that, this movie is well worth a look.(P.S. - While the movie got an "R" rating from the MPAA back in 1981, by today's standards the movie doesn't deserve more than a "PG-13" rating.)

VHS long-since expired; bring-on Blu-Ray.Peter Falk, dishevelled here too, sleazy-manager of two seriously-hot 'girls' takes-on a series of very-nasty venue-owners to ensure his tag-team are Number-One.Love the parts where having won on-the-night though NOT paid he performs a 'stress-test' on venue-owners foreign-car & the consequences of using his 'special' dice.For the benefit of 'young-uns' Liberachi was a famous piano-player parodied by a now-defunct furniture-store, famous for it's LA Law style song 'See You All In Court'.

This was a fairly interesting movie with a different topic: women's wrestling. It also features a couple of hot-looking ladies (if you can call them that) and has the usually-likable Peter Falk of Columbo TV-fame in the lead.However, this is typical '70s sleaze with lots of profanity and nudity, particularly the latter and mainly to attract a male audience. I like looking at these "babes" as much anyone but, hey, to be honest, films like this made us learn the meaning of the word "gratuitous." The wrestling scenes were decent but the last one went on forever. Actually, it went on for 20 straight minutes which seems like forever in a film. That, and a cast of sleazy characters, made this too unappealing and down for the count.