Development and writing

Sylvester Stallone wrote the story as a novel then a screenplay before he wrote Rocky. He later recalled:

I was very broke and I optioned the screenplay of PARADISE ALLEY to a real ... how should I say this ... maggot, who put his hooks in so deep I could never get it away from him. So the first time I went in to meet Chartoff and Winkler, I was there on an acting job. I didn't get it, but on the way out I said, "I have this screenplay called PARADISE ALLEY." They said to bring it over and I did. They wanted to make it, but the other cretin that I had optioned it to was so obnoxious, so overbearing, that the producers wanted nothing to do with me or the screenplay. So on the way out, they said, "If you have any ideas, we'd be happy to look at them." That night I went home - even a fire extinguisher couldn't cool the burning in my brain. The door of opportunity was wide open and I had nothing to carry over its threshold. That's when I started to write ROCKY. So thank God for the maggot; otherwise I never would've written the story of Mr. Balboa.^[4]

In an interview with Roger Ebert in 1980, Stallone mentioned that Paradise Alley was originally a much longer film before he was forced by Universal Pictures to cut it down. Stallone said: "I'll never forgive myself for the way I allowed myself to be manipulated during the editing of that film. There were a lot of scenes in there to give atmosphere and character, and they wanted them out just to speed things along. They removed 40 scenes, altogether. I put 10 of them back in for the version shown on TV. For example, the whole sequence of the soldier without legs, sitting on a bar eating peanuts."

Edward R. Pressman got involved in the project prior to Rocky however, after the success of Rocky, the project received studio involvement.^[5]

Theatrical

Paradise Alley was released in the United States on November 10, 1978. In the Philippines, the film was released on December 5, 1990, with the song "U Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer included in the soundtrack.^[6]

Critical response

Paradise Alley received negative reviews from many critics, who often compared the film unfavorably to Rocky. Vincent Canby of The New York Times (who, ironically, had written one of the harshest reviews of Rocky) called it "a phony, attitudinizing, self-indulgent mess ... If there had been just a tiny bit of wit involved, or a consistent point of view, or genuine feeling, 'Paradise Alley' might have been an engaging throwback to the true B pictures of yesteryear. As it is, it's 'Rocky' warmed over and then thrown out."^[7]

Pauline Kael of The New Yorker also panned the film, writing: "As a director, Stallone shows no more feeling for visual modulation than as Cosmo he does for vocal modulation. In all his capacities here, he's trying to get a hammerlock on our emotions. You feel he'd reach out from the screen and grab you by the throat if he could ... As a writer, he's a primitive mining the mass media, without any apparent awareness of how stale his ideas are. Doesn't he know that there are a lot of us who have seen the same plays and movies he has? Aren't we even expected to remember 'Rocky'? Stallone tries to work our emotions in exactly the same ways, and there's no surprise to the shamelessness this time."^[8]

Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote: "Maybe there's something to be said for Stallone overreaching himself this early in his starring career. He may be compelled to take a more realistic look at what he can and cannot do after audiences exit shaking their heads over the scatterbrained mentality that seems to control 'Paradise Alley'. Stallone has a distinctive, funny presence and a flair for spontaneous slapstick and sentiment, but he appears to be a miserable coordinator and ringmaster."^[9]

Writing in New York magazine, David Denby found the film to have "some moments of warmth in its portrait of gaudy neighborhood bars and dance halls, gangsters, bimbos, and hangers-on, but the movie is so hyperbolic and synthetic you don't believe a minute of it."^[10]

John Gault of Maclean's wrote: "The climactic wrestling sequence is so derivative of 'Rocky' you almost start humming 'Gonna Fly Now'. But 'Rocky' did what every good fairy tale does: it temporarily suspended disbelief, made the implausible plausible. That works only if there is a high degree of consistency in plot and characterization, and 'Paradise Alley' doesn't have it."^[11]

Gene Siskel gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, praising the "rich characters" and declaring it "one of the most colorful films of the year."^[12] In a separate article he called it "a thoroughly engaging film—until its last reel, when Stallone slaps on a conventional, upbeat ending that is all wrong for this movie. It's the ending of 'Rocky' all over again, as Stallone and his older brother in the movie go unpunished for exploiting their baby brother, the brutish giant ... They don't deserve the same fate as Rocky. And to give them the same fate is to insult the audience's intelligence."^[13]

Variety gave the film a mostly positive review, calling it "'Rocky' rewritten by Damon Runyon ... It's an upbeat, funny, nostalgic film populated by colorful characters, memorable more for their individual moments than for their parts in the larger story." The review's only point of criticism was that "The relationship between the men and their women is never explored and is the one unsatisfying element in the film. The women have no life beyond their men; they are types who exist only as companions."^[14]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an aggregated score of 40% based on 5 critic reviews, with an average rating of 4/10.^[15] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100 based on eight critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".^[16]

In popular culture

The premise of Paradise Alley was later parodied in the fifth episode of the second season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. In the episode, Mac and Dennis exploit the childish Charlie by training him to become an underground street fighter so that they can profit off of it. Anne Archer, who portrayed Annie in Paradise Alley, also portrayed Barbara Reynolds on the TV show.