Spike of Bensonhurst

This is a movie about yankees- it has the mob, boxers, Puerto Ricans, and it's made by Andy Warhol's buddy, Paul Morrisey- all of these things add up to a proto-Jersey Shore cultural portrait. Boxing movies have been around forever, but after the success of Rocky, this kind of movie was more likely to get funded, despite the clear disdain for the Italian boxing culture. This movie helped to form the "faggidaboutit" Italian stereotypes later reinforced by Spike Lee and the Nintendo company:

(this guy's in the movie)

Spike is an Italian boxer that wants to make it up the ladder by getting in good with the local mob boss (Ernest Borgnine), also wanting to slip Borgnine's daughter the Italian sausage. He thinks the boxing world needs another great white hope, but nobody wants to buy in on the dream. Spike keeps getting into mild trouble that threatens to get him booted out of the Bensonhurst neighborhood altogether. He moves into the PuertoRican neighborhood and starts beating on the drug dealers and homos. Borgnine, in one of his 2,000,000 roles, seems to hardly be able to deliver his lines without cracking up.

This movie is loaded with sleazy dialogue that just wouldn't fit in On the Waterfront: "I don't take no orders from no crummy old dyke, or her slut girlfriend," followed immediately with the classic line: "How fuckin dare you talk to your fuckin mother like that." Borgnine blurts this cherry morsel of dialogue: "They were just having a little gang fight with a bunch of Puerto Ricans, what's so screwy about that?" Possibly the best monologue is from a wild eyed junkie who complains to the cops that Spike has been taking their dope, even though they were just "shootin' up, real peaceful like." After the cop asks if she wants to press charges she goes into this: "Man, I ain't got all day to waste with this chickenshit court crap, I gots to make MONEY to get some more DRUGS! You know- this system SUCKS, I mean REALLY SUCKS!" You'll lose interest in this odd movie well before this line shows up , unfortunately. 

In an odd turn, the soundtrack was performed by Coati Mundi, member of Kid Creole and the Coconuts. And let's not forget the most important advice from a legendary actor: