Happy holidays, you reprobates! To ring in the Christmas season, we invited Sean Price from the Life is Like a Movie Podcast to talk about yet another unconventional holiday classic – so unconventional even the characters don’t know why it takes place on Christmas: Rocky IV!
With Creed getting praise left and right, it’s weird to think that so much of the plot of that Oscar-caliber drama is dependent on this splendiferous piece of ’80s cheese, in which the Italian Stallion (Sly Stallone, also writing and directing) travels to Mother Russia on Christmas Day to fight roided-up Russian cyborg Ivan Drago (Dolph “You Gave That Guy Lines?” Lundgren) to avenge the death of his friend Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers). Full of freeze frames, training montages, and ostentatious displays of American spirit, Rocky IV isn’t quite the inspirational classic of its first and latest films in the series.
Still, at least it’s got Stallone giving Paulie a….robot?….for his birthday, Rocky climbing mountains and hauling logs to train for a boxing match, and James Brown in a leotard. Sit by the Christmas tree and take a listen, along with our custom cocktail and drinking rules!
(Thanks to our sponsor Basecamp as a proud member of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)