ROCKY IV (United Artists) Surprisingly—especially for those who deride Sly Stallone�s generally entertaining films— Rocky IV is exceptionally good, easily the best of the series since the original. The pre-fight hooplah of the Apollo Creed/Ivan Drago bout (featuring no less than James Brown) is essentially too accurate a presentation of the Vegas fight scene to be satire. Creed�s brutal death in the ring—even when you know it�s coming—is shocking, but not unrealistic. And Dolph Lundgren plays Russian superman Drago to the hilt: the man seems inhumanly evil. In a fast-paced flick, some of the best scenes come when Ivan and Rocky are training for their mega-clash: the cold Drago using ultra-scientific machinery while the relentless Balboa relies upon the harsh Russian winter to hone himself into what his foe will later describe as a �man of iron.� The climactic fight is superbly filmed, with the initially-battered Rocky falling back on his great heart (as usual) to overcome the Soviet man-machine. And complaints of Stallone�s jingoism are unwarranted: by movie�s end, anyone who thinks as stellar a citizen as Rocky Balboa doesn�t deserve to be wrapped in the flag is little more than a grump. One more, please. J.K.

INVASION OF THE ELVIS ZOMBIES by Gary Panter (Raw Books)