Psyko’s movie review of Lunatic: The Luna Vachon story

I wanted to do a review of Crown Jewel, but the fact that the show was in the morning opened up the rest of the day. Because of that, I was able to go see this documentary about the life of Luna Vachon at the FNC, which is a local film festival here in Montreal. After seeing the movie, I thought it would make for a fun little column.

But I still want to write about Crown Jewel, so here are my quick thoughts on the event.

If I’m being honest, if you take all the commercial breaks and tourism ads away from the show, this was one of the best PLEs of the year. The opening match was great and helped make the division look like an unstoppable force while continuing the slow heel turn of Jey Uso.

Cena vs. Styles was by far the match of the show and a match-of-the-year candidate in my book, and the main event also delivered. Even the women’s matches were really strong.

In the end, I would give Crown Jewel 4 stars out of 5. I’m taking one star away because of all the ad breaks and tourism ads.

Now, let’s talk about the main subject. Like I wrote in the opening, I got to see the Luna Vachon documentary this afternoon, and I have to say, it’s a fantastic movie.

The movie starts by setting up who the Vachon family was and her upbringing in that family. We all know how great Mad Dog, Paul, and Vivian Vachon were, but for those who don’t know much about wrestling history, this is a great introduction to her story. Then they start talking about Luna and her upbringing in the Vachon family since, as we all know, Paul Vachon wasn’t her biological father. He adopted her when she was two years old after her biological dad left her mom and killed himself. Paul met her mom at a bar after the matches, and the rest is history.

At seven years old, she saw her dad wrestle at Madison Square Garden, and she was hooked. She told her dad that she wanted to be a wrestler, which he wasn’t really happy about.

Then the movie touched on how she first got started in the business, which means they covered the whole Moolah situation since Luna was sent to train with Moolah by her dad and her aunt, who didn’t want to train her. So obviously, they covered the whole Moolah “pimping girls” story since Luna was one of Moolah’s victims. After they told that story, they cut to an interview with her dad to try to confirm if it was true, and you could tell Paul didn’t want to talk about it.

After this, we go into her first real big break in Florida Championship Wrestling and her angle with Kevin Sullivan, which was also the birth of the Luna character. This was a really great segment, especially if you’ve never heard or seen any of that stuff before, and Sullivan gives some great perspective on what it was like to work with Luna back then.

Then we go into her involvement with the creation of the Wild Women of Wrestling promotion, which was also fun since I’m sure a lot of fans, including myself, never knew that promotion existed. That’s where we slowly get into her mental illness, as she was bipolar. When she was on her meds, everything was okay, but if she wasn’t taking them, the Luna side would come out and she’d become paranoid. That’s where you get an intense interview with Aubrey Edwards, who is also bipolar, and she talked about how she deals with her mental illness. Several of Luna’s friends from her Wild Women days also talked about some of the worst things they went through with Luna, but also how much they still cared about her.

For the rest of the movie, it’s mostly about her WWE career—why she left the first time, and why she came back in 1998. If you remember WWE in the ’90s, they really didn’t care about women’s wrestling, so Luna wasn’t really used as a wrestler but more as a valet. That got to her, since she wanted to be a top wrestler but couldn’t because they didn’t have a women’s division until 1994, when they brought in Madusa. Even then, the division was pretty much just Madusa, Luna, and whoever they brought in to face Madusa. So to say WWE didn’t care about women’s wrestling is an understatement.

During this segment, we got a great interview with Madusa, who talked about how frustrated she was that Vince didn’t want to give Luna a run with the title, and how she even wanted to drop the belt to Luna at a house show as a shoot—but Luna turned her down. They also touched on Madusa’s exit from WWE, and when asked if it was better in WCW, she pretty much said, “Hell no!”

Luna went to WCW for a bit and ECW for a bit, but in the end, her loyalty to Vince was too strong and she went back to WWE. But we all know how women’s wrestling was treated during the Attitude Era, so Luna didn’t really fit in with the current landscape. It was hard on her, as she felt out of place and unappreciated.

One story that really got to me was the one about her mixed tag match at WrestleMania 15. Before the match, she went to train with Sable and really wanted to teach her how to wrestle. She told Sable that it would be practical for her to learn how to take bumps, and Sable’s response was, “Vince told me I don’t need to learn how to bump,” and she left.

Then on the night of the match, Vince went to Luna and basically threatened her, saying that if Sable got hurt in any way, he’d fire her on the spot. So, as we saw, the match went off without a hitch and Sable was made to look like a million bucks—but that’s where the story almost took a darker turn and showed how bad Vince was.

After the match, Luna got backstage and Vince was waiting with a big bouquet of flowers. He started congratulating Sable for her performance. Luna, who didn’t realize Sable was behind her, thought Vince was finally acknowledging her. But as soon as she realized the flowers were for Sable, she went into such a negative tailspin that her husband at the time, Gangrel, thought she might kill herself on the spot. Owen Hart, seeing what had just happened, went to her, comforted her, and probably saved her life.

By doing that, Owen pretty much saved her life, because without his quick thinking, we probably would have lost Luna a lot sooner.

After that, the movie goes into the rest of her WWE career, her retirement, and her relationship with Gangrel—how connected they were, and what led to their divorce. We get a lot of great stories from Gangrel in that part of the movie, and again, it shows a side of Luna that we didn’t know much about.

Finally, we get to the end of her story and the struggles she had to overcome after she retired and after Gangrel left her, and how she overcame them until her death in 2010. This is one of the hardest but also most touching segments of the movie, as we hear people talk about how they found out she had died and how they reacted. The most touching one was Gangrel, who was sick the day she died and was about to be hospitalized. He talked about how he somehow knew she had passed away.

The saddest moment was seeing Paul try to talk about her death—it was too much for him to remember. He basically said he was done, didn’t want to continue the documentary, and walked out. It was really gut-wrenching, but you understood why he reacted that way.

In the end, this is a really strong documentary about a woman we didn’t know enough about. Many people gave interviews for this movie—Paul Vachon (who had such a hard time speaking that they had to use subtitles), one of Luna’s sons, Van from Hell’s Kitchen, Kevin Sullivan, Missy Hyatt, Madusa, Gangrel, and many other wrestlers and personalities who worked with her over the years. Together, they painted a portrait of Luna that we didn’t know before, and it made me appreciate her a lot more and everything she did for the business.

On a personal level, it also made me hate WWE’s decision to induct her into the Hall of Fame through the “alumni” section even more, as she deserved far more than to be one of the ten quick mentions in that wing of the Hall of Fame.

Luna was a pioneer of women’s wrestling. While she had a lot of demons and was never able to fully get a grip on her mental illness, she deserved to be recognized as one of the best in women’s wrestling history. At least now we have a movie that does that.

This is such a fantastic film, and while I don’t know if it’s on streaming yet or just doing the festival circuit before getting an official release, I highly recommend it. If it plays on a streaming platform or at a festival near you, it truly deserves to be seen by fans—and this will likely be the best way to celebrate Luna’s legacy.