BELOW THE BELT-1980-A waitress named Rosa (Regina Baff) trains to become a woman wrestler (well, I guess she couldn't train to become a male wrestler...). Since she's tried various occupations no one believes she'll succeed. She's trained by Mildred Burke (a real life former pro wrestler) and she practices on her DJ boyfriend. She trains hard, her gum chewing friend comes on to her and she's dumped by her boyfriend. She goes to Florida to train under the weird looking Jean (Billie Mahoney). Dolph Sweet plays Jean's husband, an alcoholic who can't remember which character in has to play in the ring and says "old wrestlers never die, they just fake away". The conceited butch ladies champ Terrible Tommy (real pro wrestler Jane O'Brien) gives her a hard time. After some adventures and soul searching Rosa gets her title shot at Tommy. Shirley Stoler from THE HONEYMOON KILLERS plays another wrestler.
BELT is very low budget but the acting is fairly good especially by Baff (who had roles in THE GREAT GATSBY and ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ) and it was made before the big budgeted flop ALL THE MARBLES. Wrestling fans might want to see it for the footage of WWWF wrestlers at Madison Square Garden in the late '70's.
Besides other wrestlers like Lenny Montana and Tiger Joe Marsh the only other "actor" (beside Sweet) I recognized was TV actor Herb Voland. The Firesign Theater provided some voices. I don't know anything about the director Robert Fowler. This is based on a novel by Roselyn Drexler who's other novel Lily was also made into a movie.
Thanks for reading!
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