From Arnie, it’s back to Sly Stallone, with Over the Top 1987, the film that asks “What if Rocky, but arm wrestling.” Directed by Menahem Golan and starring Sylvester Stallone and David Mendell. Robert Loggia and Susan Blakely.
A very brief overview of Over-The-Top (spoilers!)
Stallone plays Lincoln Hawk, a truck-driving/semi-pro arm wrestler, in an effort to reconnect with his estranged son, Mike (David Mendell). They drive cross the country in his rig to visit Mike’s mom (Susan Blakely), who’s in hospital. Meanwhile, Mike’s grandfather (Robert Loggia) has gone to great lengths to keep Hawk away from his daughter and grandson. Sending out a team of professionally trained child-snatchers to take Mike back. Hawk starts to bond with his son, but they turn up too late at the hospital, and Mike’s Mom has died. Mike goes back to his grandfather. Hawk goes to Vegas to compete in an arm wrestling contest, the prize for winning is $500,000, and a high-end truck.
Mike finds a stack of letters from his Dad that his rat-bastard grandfather hid from him. Mike then travels to Vegas, Hawk wins the contest, gets the rig and reconnects with his son. (Phew!)
Over The Top is just that “over the top.” It tries to replicate the feeling of the Rocky films and almost succeeds, but the characters and situations aren’t as deep and lack the immediate charm of Rocky’s cast.
That said it has a lot of heart, just enough to overlook some of the plot’s more ludicrous moments. Along with a rockin’ soundtrack that carries you through the film with songs from Kenny Loggins and the title track Take It Higher by Larry Greeny. Over the Top is an easy recommendation for your next 80s movie night.
It goes like this…
While on their cross-country trip, they stop at a diner that has a small selection of arcade games. Three punk kids can be seen playing the games in the background. The lead punk kid is playing the pinball machine High Hand (Gottlieb, 1973) while the other two play.
VS. Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1986) and Punchout!! Nintendo,1984)
Lincoln Hawk as a bonding and self-confidence boost for his son, challenges one of the punk kids to an arm wrestling match on his son’s behalf.
They use the pinball table High Hand as the surface for their match. Mike loses at first, but after a pep talk from his father, he’s ready for a rematch, one hat flip backwards later, and the switch is on. This time Mike is victorious. The punk kid, despite their persona, takes the loss quite humbly and honours their bet, paying up.
VS. OVER THE TOP
With the exception of High Hand, all the other machines are video arcades from Nintendo.
The games in the Diner’s mini arcade are as follows.
Mario Bros (1983) (Nintendo)
High Hand Pinball (1973) (GOTTLIEB)
VS. Super Mario Bros. (1986) (Nintendo)
Punch-Out!! (1984) (Nintendo)
Arm Wrestling (1985) (Nintendo)
The arcade games in this scene seem to have a loose thematic relationship with the film’s larger narrative as well as what appears to be a reference to the Rocky films.
The most apparent is the Arm Wrestling (Arcade 1985), which has a clear connection to the arm wrestling in the film. The arcade game was a spin-off of sorts from Punch Out, sharing a similar dual monitor set-up.
Punch out!! (Arcade 1984) A popular boxing arcade game, that is perhaps better remembered now for its port to the NES as Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out. (NES 1987) No doubt the arcade was included as a reference to the Rocky series of films.
Other than being another Nintendo machine, Mario Bros, and the VS.Super Mario Bros have no apparent deeper meaning. Likely to fill out the space or was part of a package deal by Nintendo or whoever supplied the machines.
An outlier is the pinball machine from the early 70s. Featuring a mechanical score, it really stands out against the video games.
The machine being called “High Hand” might be some very subtle reference to Hawks’s arm wrestling technique of going over the top, or having the higher hand in order to win. Having a higher hand in a game of cards would be the winning hand equivalent to the hand that wins at arm wrestling, literally being the “high hand.”
Muted
The game’s audio has also been replaced. Replacing audio elements in post-production is very common in film production, so it’s not too surprising.
Something that does stand out, though, is that the sounds the arcade games make are generic laser blasting type sounds, the kind you might get in a space shooter, but not in any of the games shown. Punchout, in particular, is well known for its use of synthesised speech. “Body blow”
In contrast, when Super Mario Bros 2 appeared in WiseGuy (see Games on Film #2) the sound was out of sync with the gameplay, but still had the correct music. Why go to the lengths to get the machines and then not use the correct audio? Perhaps it was too distracting or didn’t fit the mood or the idea of what most nongamers thought arcades sounded like.
Real location, fake arcade.
The mini arcade itself also seems a little out of place, squeezed into a corner. Sure, arcades were popular at the time, and it wouldn’t have been uncommon to see games like this in a diner/truckstop setting.
The place is already relatively small, and table real estate would have been important. Giving up 3 or 4 tables for the sake of whatever revenue some arcade games would bring in might not be worth it. Likely, the games were only put there for the film’s production and were not a permanent feature.
While it may seem obvious a lot of what is seen in films is fabricated, even when it’s shot in a real-world location. Such as the arcade from Terminator 2 (See Games on Film #4), which was filmed at the real Santa Monica Place Mall in California, but the arcade itself was made for the production. Some films blur the line somewhat where a location can seem barely changed from how it actually is such as with Sassony arcade at the start of Rocky III. (See Games on Film #1.)
State of Play 1987
Nintendo was running high on its success, being a market leader in the States. In 1987 the NES was launched in the UK, Ireland, Australia and Italy excluding Australia the NES had already been launched in the rest of Europe the previous year. For some reason, it took companies quite a while to get on the idea of global launches.
Meanwhile, in Japan on October 30th 1987, NEC introduced the PC Engine, the first “16-bit” home console. PC Engine games came on curious flat cards, something which Sega had similarly experimented with on their Master System. PC Engine was presented as a 16-bit system, but perhaps more accurately, an 8-bit 16-bit hybrid. (It had an 8-bit CPU, with dual 16-bit graphics processors.)
Almost exactly a year later, on October 29th 1988, Sega brought out its own 16-bit machine, the Sega Mega Drive in Japan. Nintendo’s Super Famicom wouldn’t come out until 1990 in Japan.
Diner
Over the years, this little diner has been used in a number of films and TV and even a music video. Check out the blog/site IAMNOTASTALKER, which has a pretty comprehensive list of all the films and TV that have used it over the years. The diner closed sometime in early 2023 and is now reportedly totally gone. So if and when they make Over the Top 2, they’ll have to find a new one.
Starting with this edition of Games on Films, I have created a timeline to better show the results and see the change in what kind of games appear in what films, and the trends (if any) that emerge.
Over The Top The Cannon Group, Inc. Production
company Distributed byWarner Bros.
Youtube: Daze with Jordan the lion: OVER THE TOP Filming Locations