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The Most Underrated Sports Movie Ever: Vision Quest Turns 40

by:Paul Wadlington•about 10 hours
penn-state-wrestling-michigan
The Penn State wrestling mat at the Bryce Jordan Center. (Pickel/BWI)

One of my favorite movies and a cult classic celebrates four decades.

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I wrote this article fourteen years ago about the movie. Give it a read. It explains why the movie is so refreshing in a fairly predictable genre.

Beyond having a kick ass 1980s soundtrack, it’s one of the best coming-of-age and sports movies ever made. The people who like this movie, adore it. But most have never seen it.

A wrestling focus and what was, at the time, an unknown cast nearly assured anonymity.

There are familiar tropes, but the film defies conventional formula, mostly because even the bit characters are so well developed.

The plot is simple. A high school senior named Louden Swain – a very good wrestler and a potential state champion in his own weight class – decides to drop two weight classes (190 to 168) to take on the best wrestler in the entire state, Brian Schute. The weight cut is agonizing and it goes against the advice of every person in his life, but it becomes his vision quest. It doesn’t take long to realize that he may have made a terrible mistake.

His life is complicated by an older female boarder (the gorgeous Linda Fiorentino) that his father takes in to help make ends meet after the family is devastated by their mother abandoning them. Swain is a bright and driven young man, but immature and naive, and the movie explores the power of his singular focus and battling for glory in a small blue collar city.

A few easter eggs:

Schute’s best friend Kuch (Michael Shoeffling) who fabricates a native America identity is Jake from Sixteen Candles. He was a champion wrestler in Pennsylvania.

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The movie has a cameo from Madonna, before she became famous. It was pretty common for Warner Brothers to cross-feature new recording artists in their movies to blow up the soundtrack and create crossover exposure.

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