The Happy Critic DVD Review: Brian Pillman – Loose Cannon

Funny how I never did a WWE DVD on 411 since now, as I buy the “personality” discs more often than not. It started a few years back when they started the whole line combined with the then-current suck state of wrestling at that point. For those who weren’t fans back around 2002, consider this: I began watching wrestling when I was 5, was a die-hard fan during the Attitude Era (1996-1999) mainly because they were doing their best stuff during that time and I was a teenager, so my life consisted only of school and a part-time job.

Yet despite this, by 2002 following the God-awful InVasion angle and a series of horrible, horrible ideas and decisions (I could go on but it would take a while, go buy Scott Keith’s books), wrestling became nothing more than a chore even for ME. I’m sure growing up probably had something to do with it, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be a fan at any age. It’s in my blood. I’m cursed with it. Yet the WWE got so terrible at that point they managed to counteract my own DNA.

So from 2002 until about 2005 I all but boycotted them, using RAW and Smackdown (and eventually just RAW) as background noise while I did more important things, gobbling up the WWE personality DVDs for my fix for wrestling. They may have blew green chunks when it came to their product for so many years, something that creeps in even today, but the company sure can make a documentary DVD. Eventually I got back into the product about a year ago with them finally getting a few things right along with John Cena, the most entertaining guy in the company. Screw all of you who hates on him, the guy is MONEY.

Oh, and speaking of books, a quick plug before I go (A View from the Cheap Seats) Mine is finally out, and I would appreciate if you all bought 8 copies. Any money I make goes toward a good cause, a no, I don’t lie about that sort of stuff. I promise here and now that every cent is spent correctly. Now buy my book or God will hurt you.

So here we have the latest one from WWE, Brian Pillman – Loose Cannon. Truth be told, I knew very little of Brian Pillman when he first came to the WWF in 1996, as I never watched WCW in the past all the way up to its extinction in 2001 outside of a few glances on Nitro during the Monday Night War. I was 14 years old in 1996, and he would be dead 18 months after he arrived, so the company never got the chance to push him to the next level before his death, and even if they did have the chance he likely wouldn’t have been able to handle it considering he was so deteriorated at that point.

The result was that I along with many other youngsters saw Pillman only as a mid-card psychopath who was never really taken seriously, and it was only a few years after he died did I realize how awesome he was and how much potential he had later in his life, not to mention his back-story with Stone Cold Steve Austin and Kevin Sullivan, among a million other stories. Needless to say, I swiped this one up the day it came out and watched it that night. And lucky you, I decided to review it.

– We start out with his mother and sisters discussing his childhood. At a young age he developed polyps on his throat, requiring nearly 40 surgeries to have them removed because they kept growing back. His doctor actually wrote a book on his case because it was so unique. This of course explains his voice, and also shows us how life gave him such a hard time even from the very beginning.

– Onto his football career, he joined the high school team but didn’t get terribly far because too many people felt he was too small. Nevertheless, he packed on some major pounds in determination to make it. He had a lot of scouts approach him for college ball but it never went anywhere. He somehow gets to walk-on in Miami (Ohio) and manages to get put in the game, and he ends up breaking the quarterback’s collar bone on the first play, finally scoring a few brownie points with the right people. Still, he didn’t get drafted, so he pursued the Bengals as a free agent and made the team on the last exhibition game. He gets the Ed Block Courage award on his rookie year.

– Pillman gets injured and released by Cincinnati and is picked up by the Bills and then the Canadian Football League, all of which doesn’t last, and sooner than later he gets involved in wrestling through Stu Hart’s Stampede Wrestling and the Hart Family Dungeon. And so it begins. His tenure in Stampede was mediocre at best because he was so green, but he could fly like the wind, something that later lead to his nickname Flyin’ Brian. He would study old Ric Flair and other legend’s tapes as well as Lou Thez’s book Hooker for guidance.

– With Jim Ross’s blessing and a conduit through the Bengals, WCW comes calling for him and he’s soon picked up and shipped to Atlanta. Dustin Runnels gives some insightful commentary: “The reason Brian was called Flyin’ Brian was because of his ariel assault.” Um, yeah. Paul Heyman believes he was ahead of him time with his acrobatic style.

– Pillman and Tom Zenk are paired together for a tag team but it doesn’t last, as Jim Ross suggests that they were both great and could work well, but something just didn’t click. They are separated soon after, and Pillman begins his Light Heavyweight Title reign. His goal was to make it as important as the Heavyweight title, but of course that didn’t happen despite his stellar matches with guys like Jushin Liger and bringing the lucha-libre style to the states.

– Pillman meets his future wife Melanie and gets married, and we even get the wedding video, although I’m not sure if it’s a legit video or something for TV. Melanie says when Brian would get home he wouldn’t want to go out but instead stay at home with the kids.

– With his singles push now over, Pillman is paired again with someone for another tag team run. Perhaps you know him: Steve Austin. Apparently Dusty was behind this decision, one Austin was a bit confused with considering he was under the impression he was preparing for a singles US Championship run, be Dusty managed to talk him into it. The team ends up becoming one of the most entertaining acts in the company with the Hollywood Blondes gimmick, so of course WCW puts a bullet into it before it can get too hot, because they weren’t put together to get over, just to put other guys over. And some people wonder why this company completely imploded later on. Dusty claims he was against the idea of breaking them up, but the “regime change” sort of overruled him.

– Pillman is now a singles guy again and gets the opportunity to be a Horseman, but it’s my understanding that the Horseman name wasn’t exactly at its peak at that particular time, and Pillman even gets bitch-slapped by Arn Anderson during one promo for not keeping his mouth shut, so it really didn’t work out. But on the other hand, this is where Pillman would start his “loose cannon” gimmick, so I suppose it did work. Speaking of which, we get the footage of Fall Brawl 95 where Pillman runs out of the ring and tries to take off Bobby Hennan’s coat, something Hennan was TOTALLY unprepared for and ends up dropping the f-bomb on the PPV in frustration. This turned out to be nothing compared to what happened later in a match with Kevin Sullivan in the Respect Match later in the year, where Pillman stops a few seconds in the match and quits, saying, “I respect you, booker man.” The look on Sullivan’s face is PRICELESS, although no one really comes out on the DVD and confirms whether or not it was a shoot or work. Again, I’m no expert on WCW, so go to Ask 411wrestling.

– Neverthless, Pillman is released from WCW and ECW quickly scoops him up days later for Cyberslam 1996. Heyman says Pillman saw no challenge in getting the crowd to cheer him, so he was going to make them boo him. Having the crowd in the palm of his hand, Pillman completely turns on them, pulls his pants down and tries to urinate in the ring. The crowd of course has no idea what to make of it, but Heyman says get got people talking. Joey Styles tells quite the odd story of how he pretty much was soured on Pillman on a personal level when he came to an older couple’s house where ECW did production and took a crap on their bathroom floor, just to be a dick. Well, I can certainly understand why Styles would be upset.

– Pillman, working without a contract in ECW, becomes the hottest free agent in wrestling…and gets in a violent car wreck before he can sign with any company and pretty much opens up the door for the beginning of the end. The injury of course introduced him to pain medication, something he would rely on a lot as time went on.

– Pillman decides to sign with the WWF before fully recovering, making a notable appearance at the 1996 King of the Ring and cutting a crazed promo about raping, pillaging and plundering the company. This was insane stuff at the time, and he looked even more evil with those crutches he required to even walk at this point. I also remember Pillman walking by Austin before Steve’s match with Marc Mero and them sharing a very uncomfortable stare, but I was too uninformed to get it at the time.

– During an episode of Superstars a few weeks before Survivor Series 96, Pillman makes the mistake of praising Bret Hart and getting absolutely beaten to death for it by Austin, the guy he was INTERVIEWING, and breaking his ankle (in storyline). Oh, this was only the beginning.

– And now…The Gun Incident. For those out of the loop, it was quite possibly the most controversial thing the WWF did – ever. Bit of a backstory, the WWF was getting creamed by WCW in every way possible at this point and was getting desperate, and we all know when Vince gets desperate, look out. Steve Austin was on the verge of getting over but needed a bit of a boost to really sell his heartless, asshole character, so we get this. During one October 1996 episode of RAW following Austin’s attack, Pillman is sitting at home speaking live via satellite regarding his condition. Austin decides that what he did wasn’t nearly enough, so he threatens to break into Pillman’s home and get him there…and actually does it. Seriously. Austin arrives at the home and beats the piss out of Pillman’s posse, smashes open a window to a side door with a hammer and welcomes himself in as Pillman’s wife nearly has a heart attack screaming. They take it all the way when Pillman breaks out a handgun and points it right at Austin, just before we “loose the feed” and the screen goes fuzzy. Pillman even manages to drop a live F-bomb on national TV when RAW brought back the feed and Austin returned to the house and is dragged out, prompting Pillman to yell “get out of the f***ing way” so he could shoot him. I remember this quite vividly (how can I not?) and it’s still one of the most shocking things I’ve ever seen on WWF TV, and I still can’t believe they did it. Understandably, the USA Network was beyond pissed and basically told them to NEVER do anything like that again, but you can be the judge on whether they have crossed that line again. The network still didn’t trust them and regulated them to a time delay for a while after this. I’m surprised they didn’t cancel them.

– Onto the Hart Foundation, Pillman is miraculously well enough to continue an in-ring career and joins up with Hart and company. Seeing all this old footage of 1997 RAW reminds me of how much I used to love watching the show and how much less I do now, but nevermind. The Hart Foundation dominated RAW during this point and gave everyone a lot of airtime, which could have been the springboard to a very successful career for Pillman, but of course didn’t.

– Pillman starts commentary because he certainly couldn’t handle a full wrestling schedule, and it turns out he can handle his own. While he enjoyed being around the business he still wanted to be in the ring. I may be stretching here but looking back, its almost as if Vince threw him into a commentary spot to keep him away from the ring but within the industry, but Brain wasn’t having it.

– We now delve into Pillman’s drug problem, as Ross and Melanie say they can’t imagine how much pain he must have been in to continue doing what he loved. Pillman’s sister tells a scary story about how Pillman once unhooked himself from an IV to go do a show, and when it was over he came back home and hooked himself back up to it. It gets to the point where Ross demands Pillman take a drug test, but Ross obviously already knew he was loaded with painkillers and God knows what else. Pillman was offended by it but did it anyway, and the result show that indeed he was on a lot of muscle relaxers and pain meds, but no street drugs. Austin says he never complained about his pain level, but many people saw the obvious. Heyman sums it up quite nicely: “Brian wasn’t in denial. He just didn’t want the help.”

– We move on to what would be Pillman’s final feud, a rivalry with Goldust over Marlena and his daughter Dakota. This was pretty edge stuff at the time too; first Pillman is forced to wear a dress after losing a match and, then Pillman calls for a rematch where he would get Marlena for 30 days if he won (he would retire if he lost), but then lays claim on national TV that he fathered Dakota. This was all scripted of course, but Dustin says he was a little uncomfortable about it considering Pillman and Terri (Marlena) used to date years back, but business is business. We get a few clips from “Brian Pillman’s XXX Files” from RAW, a series of home video-style vignette’s where Pillman would describe how much fun he supposedly had with his wife the night before.

– So it finally happens: Pillman doesn’t show up for his Badd Blood match against Dude Love, and many think he just missed his flight. But when his hotel room is checked his dead body is discovered. Vince announces the tragic event during the PPV and then dedicates RAW to his memory the night after. They open the show with the Ten Bell Salute and then conducts a live interview with his wife Melanie from their home. Bear in mind this was less than 24 hours after her husband’s death. Melanie insists that she was not talked into anything and simply made her own decision to appear on the show. I remember all of this extremely well; as a 15-year-old it was quite disheartening to just turn on my TV for RAW one Monday evening and find out one of your sports entertainers is dead, having no prior knowledge or warning of any problem he was having. The Internet was still in its infancy during this time, so news didn’t spread they way it does now. The whole thing stunk and it still does now, and what’s so tragic about the whole situation is that WWE didn’t get the full hint until a good ten years later concerning the health of their wrestlers. I’m certainly not saying the company is heartless and responsible for any death, but it also didn’t have to work out this way either.

8.0

The Video

2-dics, full-screen.

7.5

The Audio

Dolby Digital Surround Sound supported.

8.5

The Extras

Ah, they always come through on the extras. As far as matches go, we get 3 on the first disc: vs. Lex Luger at Halloween Havoc 89; vs. Midnight Cowboys in Stampede Wrestling 1988 (as Bad Company); and vs. the Fabulous Freebirds in 1990 NWA. Segments include the Flair for the Old promo, Pillman’s XXX Files, the entire Gun Incident on RAW as well as a list of additional stories from a number of people. I will say that the one Jim Ross gives (“Pillman Asks JR for a Meeting”) is reason enough to buy the DVD. It’s THAT good, and there is no way I can do it justice by recapping it.

The 2nd disc has 13 (!!!) matches to it, some bad, some good and some REALLY good. I finally get to watch the 5-on-5 1997 Canadian Stampede main event again with this inclusion. I saw it once live on PPV and remembered how friggin’ awesome it was, but it’s never been available until now. The best part of the match is the fact that Austin was nearly at the height of his popularity at that point yet when he entered Canada he was DESPISED. I mean, people really hated the guy there, and it was so odd to see Austin playing the heel, getting pumbled by Pillman and Bret Hart and getting cheered for it. Twilight Zone here, folks.

Other matches are Goldust at Ground Zero 1997 (I believe his last televised match before his death less than a month later), Austin on RAW June 1997, along with a horde of WCW matches, most notably the one on the first Nitro in September 1995 against Liger. All in all a great collection of stuff.

9.0

The 411: A definite worthy inclusion for any wrestling fan young or old as a testament to what could have been for the hopeful superstar. It’s a bit tragic and definitely isn’t something to help cheer you’re day up, but such is life. The 90-minute doc along with the superb bundle of extras is worth the money. If WWE can keep cranking these out, I don’t think I’ll ever need their programming again.

Final Score:  8.0   [ Very Good ]