Review of Spike of Bensonhurst (1988) by Aaron W — 03 Jan 2009

God, I love Paul Morrissey. This is probably his most seemingly normal film on the surface. It's got all the trademarks of a typical eighties flick, but the subversive morality and underlying humor of this is anything but normal. If you really break it down, this is a flick about a racist boxer who gets two girls pregnant, tries to marry the rich one, but ends up settling for the other one for no other reason than that it got too hard to deal with the rich girl's family. This is pretty much Morrissey parodying the sorts of eighties films John Hughes was producing at the time and their sort of "moral of the story" endings. It's spot on and absolutely brilliant. As for the cast, Ernest Borgnine is great as the Bensonhurst mob boss, and Sasha Mitchell is hilarious and believable as Spike. Morrissey regular Geraldine Smith is fantastically irreverent as well as Spike's temporarily lesbian mother.

Oh...And Talisa Soto (Spike's second best) is absolutely gorgeous.