Let's All Go to the Movies
When you go to a film festival, you never what kind of picture you’re going to see. One movie might be a slice-of-life tale from a Third World country; the next could be a documentary about ants or the stock market or anything else under the sun. Of course, they are usually “art films.” So, it was probably a shock that on the festival circuit, in the last year, there have been two pictures about wrestling and they could hardly be more different. “Lipstick and Dynamite” is a documentary about the pioneers of women’s wrestling, while “The Calamari Wrestler” is the story of a wrestler-turned-squid that seems to be one part soap opera, one part Gamera picture.
“Lipstick” features some well-known workers, like Moolah and Mae Young and some you may have heard of before, like Ella Waldek and Gladys “Killem” Gillem. All of them came to the business in different ways, yet they all seem to have similar tales of life on the road and dealing with promoters like Billy Wolfe. The film is mainly the women reminiscing about their life in the business, often presenting two sides of a story from both participant’s point-of-view. There is lots of archival footage and photos in the picture, which ends with a wrestlers’ reunion (not Cauliflower Alley, although that is where the film’s genesis started) attended by all the ladies. There is even footage of the camp classic “Racket Girls,” a movie so awful it ended up on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Like all documentaries, the viewer needs to know the methodologies of the filmmakers when watching the film. The movie’s writer and director, Ruth Leitman, explains in her commentary that she is a feminist documentarian and one of her goals in making the film was to show how these women wrestlers were powerful symbols in the 1950s. It is funny to note that she mentions that at least one of the women (Ella Waldek) didn’t even know what a feminist was and said “if she meant Women’s Lib, I wasn’t into that. I didn’t burn my bra because I needed it.”
Perhaps the biggest pet peeve that a dedicated wrestling fan would have with the film is that the women discuss all of their matches as if they were shoots. Some of them certainly may be, but they give the impression all their bouts were on the level. It would appear to be a very small point, but it undermines the integrity of the film if such an important aspect of the film is fudged.
On the other hand, a movie about a fighting squid doesn’t need to be quite so concerned with questions of “shoot vs work,” although that notion, and it’s relation to the puroresu business in Japan is one of the main themes of the plot.
Ah, the plot of a movie called “The Calamari Wrestler.” Well, take a seat. There was once a wrestler (played by Osamu Nishimura) who develops cancer and then disappears. He does not die, but instead, after being purged of baser instincts, is reborn as a half-squid, half-man. He returns to Japan to reclaim both his title and his lady love, both of whom are now possessed by his former protégé (AKIRA).
Instead of being scared of the Calamari, he is embraced and soon training for a match against his former friend (stupid vs pupil, a booking staple). He runs afoul of the promoters (who have no interest in man vs mollusk) and his trainer, who soon abandons the squid for the other wrestler. And then, things get really crazy.
Is the movie crazy? Oh yes. Silly too. But like the Japanese monster movies of the 1960s and 1970s, there’s an internal logic to everything that leads to things being deal with matter-of-factly, no matter how odd they may seem to be. Squid buying food in a market? No big deal. Squid romances his former fiancée? No sweat. And so on.
Oddly enough, for such a silly movie, there are plenty of in-jokes and metatextual moments in the film. There are homages to Rikidozan, the famous Inoki/Ali fight and the war in Japan between puro and MMA. There are even cameos by Takayama, where he is predicting the outcome of a fight between the Calamari and …, let’s just say something else.
Both films feature plenty of supplementary materials. “Lipstick” has the aforementioned commentary and a number of featurettes, including the struggle of the filmmakers to get Moolah to participate in the film. “Calamari” has a behind-the-scenes clip, as well as TV and movie trailers, and a music video with lots of wacky footage sung by a J-pop star who looks like she stepped out of a Final Fantasy game.
Although very different, each film was put together with a love of the business. Each is worth checking out, likely through mail order or Netflix, as most mainstream video stores are not likely to carry either movie.
Mark Coale
Odessa Steps Magazine
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