The Rocky films are great aren’t they? They started off as a gritty fictional document of a rising boxing star, closing with a film that showed Rocky Balboa resembling a relaxed, tanned phallus that has been dipped in a particularly aggressive wasp nest.

And while you think that Rocky was out for the count (or, It Really Should’ve Thrown The Towel In At Rocky IV Because It Was Ace), you’d be massively wrong.

That’s because Rocky is climbing up the ropes again in slow motion, this time with another hugely stupid idea which sounds like the work of a satirist. Ladies and gentlemen, in the blue corner we have decency which is already weeping… and his opponent, in the red corner, Rocky: The Broadway Musical!

That’s right. You are not dreaming that last sentence. A team of berks, comprising of Tony Award-winning songwriters Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, alongside Thomas Meehan who has been involved with Hairspray, Annie and The Producers, are working on a musical adaptation of a bunch of films that star a central character who talks like he’s deaf.

The show is set to hit Broadway by 2013.

Better yet is that Sylvester Stallone is throwing his oar in, attending a private reading of the show which was held in New York recently.

Meehan says:

“At first I thought, all the world needs is a ‘Rocky’ musical. But then I looked at the film. I thought it had beautiful construction and such high emotion, and it was a natural musical: There is a David and Goliath story, a Cinderella story, a love story between two outcasts. It’s less about boxing than about finding self-respect and finding your soul mate.”

So, what can we expect from Rocky: The Musical?

Well, initially, we’d hoped it would just be two fellas on a stage knocking forty shades of shit out of each other, allowing pretentious theatre-goers to coo about how visceral and ‘powerfully brutal’ the whole spectacle is. However, it is clear that this wouldn’t be enough as a musical with no songs isn’t a musical at all.

As such, we’d like to see a rendition of a song called ‘Adrian’ (yes, that’s how you spell it. No, it isn’t ‘Adrienne’. We know. Don’t blame us), which sees the assembled cast delivering the name, over and over in the iconic manner that Stallone delivered it in the film, leaving audiences treated to a sound not unlike six bull seals being clubbed over the head with rubber mallets.

We’d also like to see a song based on the robot that Paulie gets for his birthday. And don’t forget James Brown’s ‘Livin’ In America’. It would be utterly, utterly pointless without it.

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Sylvester Stallone is a hilarious man with an even more hilarious face, topped by his even more amusing voice. He’s a man who has made a career of sounding like he’s been stung on the tongue by a nest of wasps.

Of course, he’s much more than a mere actor. He’s a director, writer and launched the movie themed Planet Hollywood restaurant chain which are uniformly awful. That said, it’s kinda cool to eat a burger next to Spock’s ears in a clear perspex case.

He’s also a big promoter of cigarettes in his films and likes getting caught in Australia with human growth hormone vials. And now, to add to this glittering CV, he’s going to launch a menswear line.

You heard.

Sly will be his very own clothing line and, bafflingly, it’ll be based on his two most famous roles – Rambo and Rocky. In his words, the range “looks for the rebel and the gentleman”, whatever that means.

So what can we look forward to? Well, aside from the dull t-shirts that will invariably hit the shelves that feature the words “ROCKY” and “RAMBO” on them, he could really go to town with his choices.

We’d like to see a sleeve made of pig meat which you sport, complete with First Blood wound which you can stitch up yourself in public while being pursued by a grimacing penis. We’d also enjoy it if you could by a facemask which makes you look like the blacked-up Rambo, complete with head band and perma-scowl.

As for the Rocky line, there should definitely by some kind of cap that fits on your head so tightly that if makes you talk like you’ve got brain damaged from being repeatedly punched in the mind by gigantic Russians.

Failing that, he should make tailor-made robot outfits that transform us into the robot that Paulie gets for his birthday in Rocky 4.

If these things don’t happen, then it’ll have been a ginormous waste of everybody’s time.

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Hollywood hard-man Bruce Willis has managed to cheat death whilst attending a screening of his latest testosterone fuelled blockbuster. What was the source of the action star’s brush with death I hear you ask, an escalator.

No, you didn’t read that wrong, Bruce Willis was nearly maimed by a moving staircase whilst on the way to watch his new film, Red, which sees Willis staring alongside John Malkovic and Dame Helen Mirren as a retired CIA black-ops agent that’s being hunted down. Only in America.

Apparently, whilst attending a movie screening an escalator Willis was travelling on accelerated rapidly to roller coaster like speeds, causing people to jump to safety. Seriously, they had to jump to safety… from an escalator… we’re not making this up!

America is one of those odd countries that doesn’t believe in stairs. Stairs require a person to walk, which is a lot of effort when you weigh as much as a small house, so nearly every step in the entire country is movable, that way it’s easier to eat a bucket of fried chicken whilst travelling between floors.

The details of Willis’ escape from the escalator of certain death are scarce, so we can only speculate, but we here at Hecklerspray are sure that Willis instantly switched into John McClane mode. He obviously saw the escalator as a terrorist plot to ruin his clean vest and so began to stalk it and places plastic explosive between the steps before base-jumping off the handrail to safety.

Meanwhile, Justin Long looked on whilst shouting, “Duuuuuuuuuuude! You totally just jumped off a escalator!” Before Willis dusted himself off and quipped, “I like to stay one step ahead.”

Thankfully, Willis was not hurt in his utterly ridiculous dice with the stairway to hell. He looked the grim reaper right in the eye, before shouting, “yippy kay yay mother…” punching him square in the face and going in to watch his latest film.

Unconfirmed reports are stating that Willis’ vest was not harmed in the assault and that it was in fact cleaner after the incident than it was before.

Next week: Sylvester Stallone squares off against a deadly cream cake.

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The ’80s revival is well underway now with right wing politicians in power in the UK, synthpop plaguing the charts and, right on cue, Sylvester Stallone is out with an old-fashioned action movie that’s filled with explosions, testosterone and big protein shake muscles constantly exposed.

It’s called The Expendables and we’ve got a behind the scenes look at the film, which includes Dolph Lundgren, someone being blown in half, Sly showing people how to look rock hard as the director and things on fire.

However, by far the most amazing spectacle in the videos is the film critic who appears at 1.36 who, on first site, will make you gasp with delight/horror. It’s worth tuning in for him alone.

There’s four videos in all, the first is below. If you like the look of it (or like us, you autistically watch anything that’s behind the scenes), parts 2-4 are linked below.

Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

The Expendables hits the theatres August 13th

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Sly Stallone is a fine and inspirational human being. You know why? Because he’s really old and has muscles. He also talks like a recovering stroke victim. If he can continue to get acting jobs and open up a dodgy restaurant chain with other celebs, then you dear reader, can do most anything if you put your mind to it. Oh, and his middle name sounds like the word ‘garden’.

Now, he’s so exciting and wild that he’s gone and shot a load of people until they are completely dead with a bazooka thing during an interview at Comic-con.

Of course, this is all to promote his new movie, The Expendables (adopts announcer voice) in theaters next Friday!

Our Sylvester (not the disco singer) decided to go ultimate bad-ass during the interview and was so buttock tightening hard that he manages to kill people who are pixels on a page.

HARD AS ROCKS IN A BAG MADE OUT OF NAILS!

Click http://bit.ly/LG_Exp that. You’ll see Sly being all macho and ROCK HARD!

And here’s a bunch of completely tough-as-sharks made from guns links!

http://www.facebook.com/expendablesmovie

http://expendablesthemovie.com/

WAAARRRRRGH!

And here’s a wimpy-as-baby shit link! SHREIK!

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Joyous news for people who just can’t get enough of old men’s saggy breasts on their movie screens: Sylvester Stallone has announced that Arnold Schwarzenegger will be starring in his upcoming film.

A little bit of sick has just come up into our mouth.

We knew that Stallone was a fan of whipping deceased stallions, but until now we thought Schwarzenegger had some pride. But something – the idea of recapturing his youth, the lure of making another bathful of quids, or the devastating effects of dementia – has convinced Arnie it would be a great idea for him to appear in Stallone’s latest film.

You know, we believe that old people can do pretty much anything young folk can. Be it chasing skirt, cutting off dogs’ bollocks or being unable to ever escape your 30-year-old child sex conviction, old people still rock! That said, if we ever found out that our 75-year-old neighbour was planning on showing film of himself dressed in nothing more than a furry loincloth and a sheen of baby oil, we would definitely have a whisper in his ear advising him against it. Then we’d have a really loud shout in his ear, because he doesn’t hear too well these days. And then we’d call the police.

Are you listening, Schwarzeneighbours?

It wasn’t always like this. Many years ago, Stallone and Schwarzenegger were musclebound behemoths, straddling the action movie genre like… well, a pair of musclebound behemoths. Time was cruel, though: Sly went and got all “boohoo, I’m such a big fat bloater,” while Arnie went and got all like “help me, I need a heart bypass but only because I smoke cigars and no way because of steroid abuse.”

Arnie realised the gig was up, and left movies to become the Mayor of Fairyland or something. Sly though – sticking two gnarled and withered fingers up at Father Time – lost weight, began shoving fistfuls of growth hormones down his gob and somehow convinced people with money to let him make at least the third and fourth worst instalments of the Rocky and Rambo softcore gay porn franchises.

And now Stallone has persuaded Schwarzenegger that it would be a good idea for them both to get their raddled old bitchtits out in his upcoming film, The Expendables. We can only assume that Arnie was confused when he was being given the pitch, and that he believed he was actually signing up to receive money from a deposed Nigerian prince.

Perhaps we aren’t being fair. Who knows, this could turn out to be a rebirth for what were once two much loved actors. Please, Firstshowing.net, tell us more and don’t spare the crazy:

The Expendables will follow a team of “expendable” mercenaries on a mission to overthrow a South American dictator. The names of the five mercenaries are Hale Caesar, Kong Kao, Christmas, Barney Ross, and Gunnar. In addition to the casting scoop, Stallone revealed to AICN that Jet Li would be fighting Dolph Lundgren at one point in the movie.

Garrggh!

This is unparalleled genius! Someone has realised that what the world wants to see – in 2009 – is Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger flapping their bingo wings around in a film which also has Jet Li fighting Dolph Lundgren. This film cannot fail. Nothing can halt its glorious ride to celluloid immortality.

But wait, we have even more casting info:

The Expendables, which already has Jason Statham signed up…

Oh.

Cocks.

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This is Mickey Rourke’s year – by Christmas he’ll have won an Oscar, become the biggest star on Earth and colonised the moon.

That’s if you believe the hype. If you don’t believe the hype you’ll realise that Mickey Rourke was lucky enough to be cast in a movie that required a washed-up squidge-faced dumbbell who cries a lot as a star. But either way, thanks to The Wrestler Mickey Rourke is back in business.

So how is Mickey Rourke going to continue of his run of critically-acclaimed highbrow movies? By co-starring in a low-rent film about Sylvester Stallone killing everything. Whoops.

The Wrestler is something of a once-in-a-lifetime movie role for Mickey Rourke. In it, he gets to do what he’s good at – which is basically beat people up – while looking all sad because he’s not really that famous any more. Until someone writes a film called Barry The Nightclub Doorman Who Suffers From Nonspecific Anxiety Disorder, there won’t ever be a film better suited to Mickey Rourke than The Wrestler.

Of course, with all the praise and mountains of award nominations he’s received for The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke runs the very real risk of being typecast as the hasbeen beefcake in serious films that are lauded by his peers and constantly nominated for the highest honours in the movie industry. And Mickey Rourke wouldn’t want that, would he?

And that’s why the first film that Mickey Rourke has agreed to appear in after the wave of renewed interest in him stirred up by The Wrestler is The Expendables, which appears to be a sort of Kwik Save knock-off version of The Dirty Dozen. Variety reports:

Mickey Rourke has joined the ranks of “The Expendables,” joining the ensemble of the Sylvester Stallone-directed action adventure for Nu Image/Millennium Films. Rourke will play an unscrupulous arms dealer who becomes the go-to guy for a group of mercenaries planning to topple a South American dictator.

OK, OK, we get it. Sylvester Stallone did the whole art mirroring life thing with Rocky Balboa where he got to play a past-it old beefcake who cries a lot, and now he’s getting Mickey Rourke – a man who’s just done the exact same thing – to be in The Expendables with him. Wow, talk about over-egging the pudding. You’re both expendable. We understand. Jeez. But at least that’s it, right?

Well, no. Also signed up for The Expendables alongside Sylvester Stallone and Mickey Rourke are expendable middle-aged cage fighter Randy Couture, expendable goon du jour Jason Statham, expendable faded kung-fu legend Jet Li and expendable blonde Sylvester Stallone Dolph Lungdren. We could be wrong, but we’re guessing that The Expendables is going to feature a lot of product placement by Stannah Stairlifts.

Best of all, The Expendables isn’t even going to being shooting until March, so there’s plenty of time for Sylvester Stallone to recruit all the other actors who Hollywood has casually tossed aside over the years, including Steven Seagal, Burt Reynolds, Cuba Gooding Jr, Heath Ledger, the ghost of Marlon Brando, with a special guest appearance by The Puppet Corpse Of Orson Welles as a hardbitted lieutenant who doesn’t play by the rules.

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This year’s Rambo gave the world just what it needed – an unnaturally jacked-up sexagenarian doing gory murder on millions of foreigners.

And, make no mistake, Rambo worked on every conceivable level – as a flat-out action movie, as a piece of issue-based social filmmaking, as a way of utterly obliterating the Burmese tourist industry, as a warning against the use of HGH at an advanced age, as a reminder that nobody looks good with a mullet. We could go on.

But anyway, that’s why we’re thrilled at the news that Sylvester Stallone has just signed on to direct Rambo 5, due to start filming next year. What’s more, Sylvester Stallone is also thought to be writing Rambo 6. Plus Stallone wants Rambo 7 to be an animated cartoon, and Rambo 8 to be a musical, and Rambo 9 to be a stageplay and Rambo 10 to be a remake of Rambo 6 starring children and puppets and Rambo 11 to be an avant-garde Warhol-style close-up of one of his own eyelashes that lasts for 48 hours.

All true. Except for the last 57 words.

Though easy to mock at the time, when Sylvester Stallone revisited one of his most famous cinematic creations for Rocky Balboa, he crafted an elegant, eloquent finale to the series that dropped the overblown posturing of its previous sequels and let the character go with a respect and dignity that nobody really thought possible.

And, right after that, Sylvester Stallone made another Rambo movie, about an old bloke killing everything and running around going “Aaargh!” a lot. So it all balances out.

And, unquestionably, Rambo was a success. It made money. It regained Sylvester Stallone’s position as the daddy of the gormless action movie. It reminded Americans that diplomacy never works and the only to resolve international disputes is to send a mental old pensioner into the woods to tear out peoples’ throats and shred them to pieces with a minigun.

That’s why it’s nothing short of genius that Sylvester Stallone has just signed up to make Rambo 5, while simultaneously writing Rambo 6. Moviehole reports:

The aging action-hero has already written “Rambo 5” – rumoured to be shooting next year in Bulgaria, though set in the United States – and is about to put pen to paper on a sixth installment of the series. Also, the next two films won’t be War films like the original movies… but just straight-up action thrillers.

That’s awesome news – when it comes to near-silent beefcakes mumbling something vaguely philosophical before firing 600 arrows through a guerrilla’s face, nobody does it better than Sylvester Stallone. But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here – we still have our reservations about Rambo 5 and Rambo 6. For instance:

*Action thrillers? That sounds terrible. Scooby Doo is an action thriller. If Rambo 5 is about Sylvester Stallone investigating a haunted funfair we’re going to be deeply pissed off.

*To make Rambo 5 better than Rambo 4, Stallone clearly needs to up the body count. We’re not sure that’s even physically possible, to be honest, unless the whole film is just a fast-forwarded domino line of shifty-looking south east Asian men getting their faces blown off one after another for a full day.

*If Rambo 5 starts filming next year, Sylvester Stallone will be 63, so he could feasibly be in his late sixties by the time Rambo 6 rolls around. Let’s hope that Sylvester Stallone has already factored that into the script and made sure that Rambo’s biggest enemies in that film are incontinence and an inability to eat soup properly.

*Remember that Sylvester Stallone needed vast quantities of Human Growth Hormone to keep him in shape for Rambo 4. We wouldn’t be surprised if, for Rambo 6, Stallone has to resort to drinking babies’ spinal fluid and injecting himself with unicorn semen.

Other than all that, though, great. We can’t wait.

Read more:

Sly Directing Rambo 5 – Moviehole

Thanks to the success of the new Rocky film and the new Rambo film, Sylvester Stallone is on top of the world right now – and he knows exactly what to do next.

That's right – more Rocky and Rambo films! Possibly. Sylvester Stallone has just signed a two-movie deal to direct and star in two brand new action films, and already it's thought that Stallone is working on sequels to Rocky Balboa and the new Rambo movie.

And why not. Sylvester Stallone has only ever had three good ideas in his life, and two of them were Rocky and Rambo. He'd make a film of his third good idea, but it's hard to make figuring out that shoes go on your feet instead of your hands very cinematic.

Until Britney Spears records a new album called I Have A Distressing Mental Illness, there's not better example of art imitating life than Sylvester Stallone. When he made Rocky he was a nobody, just like Rocky. But by the time he made Rocky 5, he'd become like the Rocky of that movie, too – bloated, lazy, overprivileged and milking a single idea until it bleeds. And when Sylvester Stallone decided to make Rocky Balboa, he was at his lowest – just like Rocky. It was a graceful comeback for the both of them.

And there's a similar sort of thing with Rambo, too, only with more guns and fighting and throat-ripping and whatnot.

Anyway, the relative box office successes of Rocky Balboa and Rambo mean that Sylvester Stallone can do whatever he likes again. And, as we all know, that means a bunch of foreigners are going to be killed horribly. Reuters reports:

Boxoffice comeback champ Sylvester Stallone has inked a lucrative deal to direct and star in two action films with "Rambo" producer Danny Dimbort. Several scripts are being considered for follow-ups to his surprise hit sequels to "First Blood" and "Rocky." With Nu Image/Millennium's new Writers Guild of America interim deal speeding up the process, the first script is expected to be ready by the fall, with production set to begin shortly thereafter.

Now, obviously it hasn't been made explicit that Sylvester Stallone will make a new Rocky movie and a new Rambo movie – especially since he's been telling people that he doesn't want to make any more of either of them – but we can't see how he even has a choice, because the other options are so stupid.

The reason people have went to see Rocky and Rambo was because of nostalgia – give Stallone a fresh new character to play and he'll need to do ten times as much work to convince people to watch it, because it'd just be a film about an angry 61-year-old man. And the other alternative is even worse – a sequel to one of Sylvester Stallone's non-Rocky, non-Rambo films. Would you go and see Demolition Man 2: Back And Even More Demolitiony? Us neither.

So let's just assume that Sylvester Stallone is working on more Rambo movies – which begs the question of how the hell he's going to manage it. When he was making the last one Stallone was chugging Human Growth Hormone like a thing possessed, so it defies logic that someone so old and out of shape would want to try and recapture their youth even though they know that they're now nothing more than an embarrassing public figure of mockery.

No, wait, we were thinking of New Kids On The Block. Sylvester Stallone should be fine.

Read more:

Stallone back in action with 2-film deal – Reuters

EDIT: OK, so it's not Sylvester Stallone in Fred Claus, it's Sylvester Stallone's brother Frank. The rest of the article has been adjusted accordingly…

It is a rule generally acknowledged that anyone who starts a hecklerspray article with the words 'it is a rule generally acknowledged' must be slapped around the face with a bag of animal poo until the end of the working day.

Another one of those rule-acknowledgey things is that – in general – Christmas films are rubbish. Sure, there are classics like It's A Wonderful Life, but just compare those to the legions of dregs like Santa Claus: The Movie, Surviving Christmas or Platoon 2: Do You Take Napalm With Your Mince Pies, You Fucking Commies? Huh? Do You? WELL?

Someone hasn't told Sylvester Stallone's BROTHER this, however. His upcoming movie is a Christmas flick, you see… and he's mightily chuffered about it.

The movie has even restored Sylvester Stallone's BROTHER's faith in his career. Just listen to the man:

"At first I was a little leery because I had all but given up on the film business after almost 60 films. I wasn't getting any work and I couldn't find an agent and no one seemed to show any interest."

Now? Now everything's all better. He's happy with being THE BROTHER OF A silver-screen slurrer again. Why? Because:

"Working on Fred Claus was a delightful experience. I wish all film sets were as joyful."

Fred Claus? The same Fred Claus that stars Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti, and is currently getting reviews about as favourable as a double screening of Brokeback Mountain and My Beautiful Laundrette at an Alabama drive-in? Yep. That's the one.

Oh well – as long as the muscly fool's BROTHER is happy. And doesn't get HIS BROTHER to make any more Rocky sequels. Hecklerspray is far more concerned with the general consensus – that Vaughn and Giamatti should go back to making decent movies. Hey – we were actually going to say that was a 'rule generally acknowledged', but luckily got away with it.

Hang on a second. How did this article start again?

Oh, for god's sake. Alright, let's get this over with. Laverty! Hyde! Lindseth! Laidlow! 

And Heritage? None of that penguin shit this time – a) I don't know where you get it from, and b) it really stings, man.