My review of Paradise Alley: Sly Stallone's forgotten classic

My Review of 'Paradise Alley:' Sylvester Stallone's forgotten classic!

Paradise Alley may not rank among Sylvester Stallone’s most successful movies such as Rocky but like Rocky this forgotten film has a lot of soul. And Stallone probably won't be ranked as one of Hollywood's quote/unquote greatest actors but when it comes to speaking honestly from the heart about taking life head-on there’s hardly ever been an actress or actor who does it as effectively as he does when he is in his element as he is in this film.


Paradise alley is a 1978 period film set in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1940s about 3 losers (who are also brothers) whose hopes of escaping dead-end lives are pinned on the youngest sibling's "God given gimmick,” (meaning his physical size) as a professional wrestler in a leaky nightclub called Paradise Alley. At the outset, Cosmo Carboni (played by Sylvester Stallone) is all in until he sees the plight of a washed up wrestler named Big Glory and gets cold feet. This about-face pits him against his older brother Lennie (played by Armand Assante) who sees the blood and sweat of their little brother Victor (played by Lee Canalito) as an opportunity to leave his job at the morgue. As if this isn’t spicy enough, Cosmo and Lenny fall in love with a beautiful redhead (played by Anne Archer) who works at a local dime-a-dance hall.


The song in the opening titles, "too close to Paradise," is sung by Stallone and pretty much sums up the film. This is also the 1st film Stallone directed following his 1977 film Rocky which was directed by John G. Avildsen. To add realism, Stallone reached out to real professional wrestlers Terry Funk, Ted DiBiase, "Dirty" Dick Murdoch, Gene Kiniski, Ray Stevens, and others. Stallone told Ebert in an interview that he wrote Paradise Alley before Rocky but he was tied to "a cretin" who optioned the film and wouldn't let him shop it to interested producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff who left the door open for him to come up with something else. Stallone rushed home, wrote Rocky, the script, in 3 days, and the rest--as they say--is history. Anyway, this is 1 of my favorite Stallone films and if you are a fan of his you owe it to yourself to see it.