Spike of Bensonhurst

Former Factory alumni Paul Morrisey's Spike of Bensonhurst(1988) is a funny film about the streets of Brooklyn. Like most of his other films, this one's an acquired taste. You either love Morrisey's work or you hate it. Spike is a punk kid who also happens to be a lousy club fighter.

He's always in and out of trouble, making life miserable for every one around him. Then one day, Spike makes a very stupid decision that'll nearly destroy his life. You might want to call this movie a lowlife Rocky. I highly recommend this film. I enjoyed it and you might too! Sasha Mitchell is Spike, Ernest Borgnine, Talisa Soto, Rick Aviles (R.I.P.) and Sylvia Miles also co-star.

Check it out. If you can find it!

This is one strange movie, and that's why I love it so much. The actors overact, the lead actor is a jerk, his Portuguese sidekick is a riot, and the last scene is strangely touching and uplifting. Oh, and the dialogue has to be heard to be believed. No, this is no Godfather, but I doubt that that was Paul Morrissey's intention. If you don't take it too seriously, you're in for one strange, fun viewing. Oh, and the Spanish pop music soundtrack by Coati Mundi is just great! I'm not joking, either. . . Gus Van Sant should have remade this instead of Psycho.

Sasha Mitchell stars as Spike Fumo a boxer who want to be a champion but not mess up his pretty looks in the process, Fumo gets along well with the mobster Baldo Cacetti (Ernest Borgnine, in a great performance) however it's when Spike starts eyeing Cacetti's daughter Angel (Maria Pitillo) he's forced out of his neighborhood and forced to live with his Puerto Rican friend Bandanna (Rick Aviles) and there he starts his own boxing circuit, however when Cacetti finds out Spike has gotten Angel pregnant, As well as Bandanna's sister India (Talisa Soto) things heat up to confrontation in this hilarious and sly satire of Rocky and mobster flicks. The best joke is of course that Sasha Mitchell doesn't want to actually earn his title as champion but rather have it fixed by mobsters so he doesn't have to work so hard. Sasha Mitchell displays real acting talent and real sharp comic skills, something that would surprise you if you saw him on that awful TV show he was on. This without a doubt Mitchell's best movie and it's thanks to the humor derived from Mitchell and Borgnine's chemistry which provides the most enjoyable moments. The only complaint is Talisa Soto who comes off like a deer in the headlights. Still it's shocking that the best Mitchell could do after this was Kickboxer 2, 3 and 4.

3.5/5 Matt Bronson

Spike of Bensonhurst is a lot of fun. It's an only slightly idealized look at life in Brooklyn's ethnic enclaves in the 1980s, by former Warhol co-conspirator Paul Morrissey. With amusing and well deployed performances by Mitchell and by Borgnine as the neighborhood Mob boss he runs afoul of, it's one of the few Brooklyn- or New York-set movies from that era that actually looks like it was filmed there, not on a set. (Even Martin Scorcese's films of the period - although not his 1970s movies, of course - look slick by comparison.)

Maybe people don't like the fact that Spike implies strongly that life goes on even amidst crack, ethnic violence, and corruption and doesn't preach about these things - just presents them as facts of the local situation, without letting them get in the way of humor? Somehow, the movie leaves you amused and feeling good in spite or even because of some of the more graphic stuff it shows you.

I grew up in Brooklyn. I knew Spike and his friends. Their names and faces were different, but their lives were the same. If you treat this movie as a political statement you will be offended. If you treat this movie as entertainment you'll suffer. But if you treat this movie as a sociological exercise, you will be enlightened. No movie made before or since, has captured the essence of Brooklyn so effectively. Story, plot progression, and emotive content are deliberately sacrificed to the end of painting a realistic portrait of both the subjects and their neighborhood. At the film's conclusion, the characters, like their environs, develop little. Such is Brooklyn.