Suburban Commando (10.4.91) review 

 

October 4, 1991 

 

Unlike Hogan’s first trip to the cinema, No Holds Barred (which I’ve reviewed in depth and ends with my favourite punchline I’ve ever written), I’ve never actually seen Suburban Commando. So, I’m at a loss as to how to review it. But I’m going to give it a shot. Suburban Commando was released in 1991. Not long after the peak of the late 80s pro-wrestling boom. Hogan had a (very) minor success with No Holds Barred in 1989. He also had a successful cameo in Gremlins II in 1990.  

 

Suburban Commando was his first real crack at Hollywood. Whether or not he’d succeed as a crossover star. The movie lost money and was such a commercial failure that the WWF stopped giving it attention. The film was such a flop that Hogan, despite barely wrestling, didn’t star in another film until 1993’s Mr Nanny. Spoiler; that film was also a flop.  

 

Suburban Commando on Letterboxd: 2.3/5 

Suburban Commando on imdb: 4.7/10 

Suburban Commando on Rotten Tomatoes: 15% (ROTTEN) 

 

Suburban Commando was directed by genre director Burt Kennedy. Burt was a director of Westerns. He wrote and directed films like the War Wagon and Support Your Local Sheriff. Kennedy didn’t write this one. If I’m polite, you can tell that he didn’t. It stars Hogan, Back to the Future‘s Christopher Lloyd, The Shining’s Shelley Duval, and Larry Miller.  

 

You can rent Suburban Commando on Amazon for £3.49. I wouldn’t recommend it.  

Anyway, Suburban Commando stars Hulk Hogan as intergalactic freedom fighter Shep Ramsay. Yes, this is a science fiction picture.  

The bad guy gets his hand chopped off in the first scene. It doesn’t seem to bother him much, so Shep hightails it out of there, the big space chicken. In escaping Hogan’s dialogue references Aliens. Hogan attempts some reacting during this phase of the film. He’s very bad. Because he gets upset and punches his spaceship, and breaks it, he must land somewhere. This is one of many things Shep punches during the film. Punching is his default setting.  

They get Hogan to sing the theme music here, which is one of many creative issues the film has. “Sing” is a bit of a reach. It’s closer to rapping. We cut to Chris Lloyd, who’s a draftsman for a firm of architects. His boss is Larry Miller.  

Perhaps predictably Lloyd’s character is a door mat and Miller is a cunt difficult man to work for. Miller has a bar in his office though, so who’s the real winner? Hogan crash lands his spaceship in a skate rink. Roller derby incoming? Please!  

Hogan walks around dressed like this, which makes me assume the feature is set in California, or he would be run out of town by the local sheriff. Hogan then walks past a lot of SPONSORS. Hey, this movie was bought and paid for by Marlboro and Joe Camel. Holy shit. We’re in the big leagues now. Hogan goes about righting perceived wrongs like punching a vending machine. He then steals someone’s clothes. Hey, this is almost EXACTLY like the Terminator. 

Everyone Lloyd bumps into seems to be a complete asshole, which is surely not FORESHADOWING??? Shep arrives at his house to rent a room. I’m not sure how he pays, unless he punched several more vending machines. He claims to be from “France”. Which is the second time a Hogan character has been connected to France after his guy in No Holds Barred could “speak French”. There’s no attempt here.  

Hogan moves in and Lloyd discovers his laser gun and accidentally shoots his neighbours car. Meanwhile, Shep is being hunted by two bounty hunters. Hey, I know that guy! It’s TONY LONGO! No idea who the other jabronie is.  

Back on planet earth Hogan kicks everyone’s ass who he runs across. Humiliated by falling off a child’s toy (a skateboard) he yeets the child’s toy into the sun. He then enjoys a whisky with the old army guy next door and listens to his meandering tales about World War II. Shep, spoiling for a fight, then upturns a car with two teenagers inside after perceived dangerous driving. Shelly Duval makes him a chocolate cake.  

Hogan decides he should help people and punches a mime because he thinks he’s stuck in a forcefield. Oh, Shep. You poor simple minded goon. He also thinks a video game is real and aggressively plays Afterburner until it explodes. A little white flag comes out of the side of the machine. Lots of cartoon logic at play here. Meanwhile, Chris Lloyd digs around through Shep’s stuff and puts it all on to deter rapists! The end of the scene is almost identical to the rape scene in Robocop.  

 

Meanwhile, Shep murders a cat. 

He’s then told to “take a seat.” You can see Hogan trying to supress the laugh. What a gag, lads. What a gag.  

Oh no, they got into the Hulkster’s coke stash! Apparently, it’s a freeze ray. This movie is obsessed with rays. It doesn’t work on Hogan though because he’s drunk ANTI-FREEZE! AAAAAHHHHHH. We like to laugh.  

Elsewhere, the Undertaker has entered into a gay marriage with Tony Longo and is enjoying cheeseburgers. I’m only just realising they put the belt on Taker right after this. Was it supposed to be a movie tie-in? They decide to give Hogan a speech here. It’s not very long but it’s like; “I usually save the world; I don’t live in it. I wonder why that is?” Good lord, Hogan is a bad actor. Like an all-time stinker.  

 

I have almost completely lost interest in this picture as it just continues with the same old shit. Shelley Duvall isn’t in this enough. Apparently, this was one of the pictures they offered to Arnie when he wanted to do a project with Danny DeVito. He picked Twins, because he’s not a moron, and Hogan mistold this as a story where he got this ahead of Arnie, so Arnie did Twins instead.  

There are a string of honking awful sight gags around this point as Hogan gets into it with the bounty hunters. At least Kennedy can frame them well, but the actual gags are laaaaaaame. Hogan is about to have an elevator fall on him, but he’s all THAT DOESN’T WORK FOR ME BROTHER. It’s astonishing, but not really all that surprising, that Undertaker is even worse than Hogan in this movie.  

 

After getting rid of the jabronies, Hogan is left to face off with the big bad guy; the bald guy from the start. He’s played by William Ball, who sadly passed away before this was released. However, he also has a “true form”, which is a weird mutant voiced by Frank “Megatron” Welker. How does this transformation occur? Well, Chris Lloyd punches him in the balls.  

This looks pretty cool, but this whole shtick is a guy in a rubber suit that you used to get in lamo 50s monster features. Shep then blows his own spaceship up and kills the guy in the rubber suit while Hogan runs away, again. The film concludes with Hogan revealing that he is now a profient skateboarder, thus getting his win back. He then attempts to murder a small child* but unlike the cat he killed earlier, he makes the effort to catch her. It’s nice Suburban Commando chose to reward the viewers in such a fashion. Get those character arcs in.  

 

*That small child would go on to fame and fortune on the TV show Mad Men as it was Elizabeth Moss.  

 

In order to achieve this effect, they had the much taller Lloyd stand in a ditch, while Hogan stood on a box. It staggers me that Lloyd chose to make this film between Back to the Future Part III and the Addams Family. Two legitimately massive Hollywood hits. Netting $245M and $191M respectively. This movie cost $11M and did not recoup that at the box office. 

 

The 411: 

Unlike the utterly charmless wasteman film that is No Holds Barred, there is a degree of success to Suburban Commando. It plays out like a cartoon during the fight sequences, and both Lloyd and Duvall give it to old college try. When they’re together, without the bumbling orange llama to ruin things, they manage to do some honest to goodness acting. 

 

Of all the Hogan vehicles I’ve seen, this is easily the best. There is an air of competence about proceedings, and only Hogan, and Calaway, ruin things. This may even have worked as a vehicle for a better actor like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Dolph Lundgren. Hogan couldn’t act his way out of a wet paper bag. Any time he’s ‘reacting’ to something in this film my eyes rolled so hard it caused me physical pain.