Sylvester Stallone as boxing hero Rocky Balboa in the legendary Rocky IV. Photo / Supplied
If you're a Sylvester Stallone fan, you may be dismayed to find your idol features very prominently in this list of the ten most excruciatingly painful sports movies ever.
1. DRIVEN
Sylvester Stallone's foot rests solidly on the accelerator of this car wreck. The star of Stop or My Mom Will Shoot wrote the screenplay and plays the veteran racer who is best buddy to the movie's young gun star.
It's all set in the world of open-top car racing - legend has it that Formula One was going to endorse the movie to attract a US audience to the sport, until Bernie Ecclestone saw the early rushes and scarpered.
The wooden acting is like something out of a Jackie Treehorn production and ludicrous doesn't begin to describe the action scenes - it's all spinning cars, airborne crashes and heavy rock.
At one point, someone crashes mid-race and their car goes into a lake and bursts into flames, the driver pinned. The race continues (no safety cars here). Another racer parks his car, jumps out, swims to the stricken racer and pulls him from the wreck. The rescuer then has time to get back into his car and win the race. Beat that Jenson Button.
Comparing this high-octane lemon with the great Rocky, which he also penned, Stallone said: "I think there's a more contemplative aspect to it all and you become more philosophical and towering, and not so self-serving."
The great man's engine is revving, but the brain is stuck in neutral.
2. DAYS OF THUNDER
Motorsport takes first and second on our podium of awfulness, and Days of Thunder hounded Driven all the way to the chequered flag.
The people who brought you Top Gun took out the fighter jets, homo-erotic volleyball scene and group karaoke chat-up concept and served the resulting stew straight back to the public. Merrily, they chucked a few extras into the broth - stock cars, and two of Australia's biggest cultural exports: Nicole Kidman and AC/DC.
But Days of Thunder banks heavily and fatally on the charm of Tom Cruise. Here he plays the reckless Cole Trickle (you should see a doctor about that, mate), an untamed talent ready to push to the limit, he's Nascar's answer to Maverick.
Stunning for its shallowness and not even redeemed by Cary Elwes hamming it up in a reinvention of Val Kilmer's Ice Man role from Top Gun, this pitlane horror is the pits.
3. ROCKY BALBOA
SuperShorts has no beef with the original Rocky, a worthy tale of the nobility of struggle and a rhapsody on finding virtue in failure. It even won the Oscar for Best Picture ahead of All the President's Men and Taxi Driver. But the slide from the original through the sequels to this muck is a steep one. By the time Balboa hit the screen, the franchise was cobblers.
Somewhere in heaven Apollo Creed - killed by the dastardly Ivan Drago in Rocky IV - shook his head and sighed as a 60-year-old Italian Stallion stepped into the ring against the reigning world champ. Rocky flicks were always a journey into the land of fantasy, but this one is about as believable as his lustrous mane of thick, indecently black hair.
4. ROCKY IV
...and here's how Apollo Creed ended up in heaven. Felled by the ferocious fists of nasty old Drago, Creed dies, leaving Rocky to represent the capitalist bloc in 15 rounds against communism's best.
It's a big ask, so while Drago loads up on steroids and trains in high-tech labs surrounded by boffins in white coats, Rocky chops wood in Siberia and runs up and down snowy mountains to get into shape.
His eventual physical triumph over Drago is a metaphor for the political triumph taking place offscreen as the Iron Curtain tumbled.
And in one of cinema's most startling political conversions, Drago comes to see the merit of incentive-based liberal economics and a market-driven, decentralised financial system midway through the bout - possibly because of a blow to the head. Chucking his coach out of the ring, he bellows at the watching Soviet leaders: "I win for me! For me!"
From there, of course, he loses.
5. ESCAPE TO VICTORY
There's a strong case for Escape to Victory featuring on Best Sports Movie lists ... but for all the wrong reasons.
Top moments are filed under "so-bad-it's-good" and the professional actors (Michael Caine, Max von Sydow) compensate for the woodenness of the non-actors (Pele, Bobby Moore, Sylvester Stallone) by overacting to stratospheric levels.
Pele's presence had many checking to see who's side Brazil was on in World War II (Answer: ours). But the flick at least answers the age-old question: Which is worse, Michael Caine's close ball control, or Pele's acting?
And once you've pondered that one, chew on this nugget: Which is worse, Stallone's goalkeeping or Stallone's acting?
6. OVER THE TOP
In 2000, Stallone received a special Razzie award as Worst Actor of the Century. Rather than single out one of his cinematic abominations, the award cited "95 per cent of Everything He's Ever Done".
But if they did single out one film, Over the Top would be a strong contender. Sly plays a truck driver who enters an arm wrestling competition in the hope of impressing his estranged son.
He keeps a weight-training unit in the cab of his truck so he can exercise his right arm while driving on inter-state missions. And they say we shouldn't text while driving - this guy works out!
According to arm-wrestling aficionados (yes, these people exist), much of Sly's wrist-grappling technique in the flick is sound: they particularly like the slick top roll with which (spoiler alert!) he triumphs in the final. Artofmanliness.com notes ruefully that this is the "best and only movie about arm wrestling".
But arm wrestling novices will be too busy guffawing at the sheer godawfulness of it all.
Our hero wears a trucker's cap which he flicks around backwards before wrestling to focus himself into "game" mode.
"It's like a switch," he explains. This will have you reaching for the switch, too.
7. FEVER PITCH
English soccer's conversion from raw-boned, sweaty, blue-collar cult to safe, middle-class, prawn-sandwich fare was complete when the effete Colin Firth strolled on screen in Fever Pitch. As a football fan, Firth makes a fine Mr Darcy.
The on-screen adaptation of Nick Hornby's novel is pallid business, missing the book's wit and love of the game and playing up a load of dreary romantic nonsense. Gosh, do you think Firth's beloved Arsenal will win the title just as he gets the girl? If this is modern football, bring back all-standing terraces, coin throwing and riots.
8. ROLLERBALL (2002)
Sequels and remakes are easy targets when compiling worst-ever-movie lists, and the 2002 revisiting of the James Caan classic Rollerball is truly a duck in a barrel.
Nonetheless it's a sitter for our list because of the vast gap in quality between the original (part psychedelic study of consumer society/part macho buddy flick) and this flop (part rock video/all terrible).
Pitched in an imaginary future, the sport in question is a gruesome blend of roller derby and motorcycle-bound gladiator warfare. Top stuff.
Here American Pie graduate Chris Klein struggles into Caan's leather-buckled, metal-studded rollerboots and LL Cool J - the very hallmark of quality cinema - clocks in for best-buddy duties. But worst of the lot is the spunky eye-candy sheila Rebecca Romijn-Stamos. (She's a hot chick! And she kicks ass! Dude!)
At the end of filming the original Rollerball the cast and stuntmen played a full-length, full-contact game using the rules written for the movie - many were hospitalised. At the end of filming the remake, the cast and crew simply hung their heads in shame. LL Cool J said in an interview that the film "sucked".
9. OLD SCORES
The Welsh/Kiwi version of Escape to Victory features Windsor Davies of It Ain't Half Hot Mum fame in the Michael Caine role and Waka Nathan doing Pele's duties.
There's a nice conceit at the heart of the movie: a linesman on his deathbed confesses that he allowed a Wales try against the All Blacks that never should have been given.
So the match must be replayed 30 years later using the same players and that guy who used to be on Shark in the Park. If that's not enough to warn you off this motley business, then surely the opportunity to see Alex Wylie explore his thespian potential should do the job.
10. THE HUMAN FACTOR
SuperShorts is never one to judge a book by its cover but clearly any movie offering a sympathetic portrayal of the 1995 Springbok team is one not to be admired.
Have we seen it? Nope. Are we nonetheless quite happy to call it one of the worst sports movies ever made? Hell yeah.
Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar are obvious enough casting calls, but Isaac Feaunati as Jonah Lomu? We can only assume LL Cool J was busy on the sequel to Rollerball.
And how do we know it's so terrible?
Nowhere in the movie's cast list is there mention of anyone called "Suzie". Nor is there a role titled "Suspicious Man Lurking in All Blacks' Hotel Kitchen".
The Kiwi was so close, but so far from more points in Barcelona.