| The New Gladiators ( 1983 ) |
| aka. Fighting Centurions, Rome 2072 A.D The New Gladiators. |
 |
| This movie is very dark ( and I'm talking about bad lighting here), and very incoherent. But it does have a number of things going for it. Firstly it is Lucio Fulci's stab at sci-fi. Secondly is the great cast of post-nuke regulars such as Al Cliver, Fred Williamson, and Al Yamanouchi. And last, but not least, The New Gladiators pre-dates Arnold Schwartzeneggers' very similar film The Running Man by a few years. |
| Directed by Lucio Fulci. |
| Starring Jared Martin, Al Cliver, Claudio Cassinelli, Eleonor Gold, Fred Williamson, and Al Yamanouchi. |
| The New Gladiators starts out with the latest game of KILLBIKE being broadcast by ' Seven Seas Television' , one of the largest t.v stations in the world. Apparently people in the future have tired of watching reality shows like Survivor, and Big Brother ( and it isn't hard to see why), and would rather watch futuristic, fruitily dressed combatants hunt each other down on early '80's model dirtbikes. Unfortunately for Seven Seas, interest in Killbike is also on the wane, and instead of deciding to show re-runs of The Golden Palace, or The Micheal Richards Show, they decide to get a bunch of deathrow inmates who all seem to be highly trained killers,and stage the first Gladiatorial contest since Roman times. |
| That's about as coherent as it gets. The inmates selected for this fight to the death include Al Cliver ( Endgame, 2020 Texas Gladiators), Fred Williamson ( From Dusk till Dawn, The New Barbarians), and Al Yamanouchi ( After the fall of New York). Thrown into the already confusing plot is current Killbike champion Drake , played by the incredibly forgettable Jared Martin.He is more one dimensional than Keanu Reeves, and the movie would have stunk if not for the supporting cast . Anyway, Drake gets conned into competing in the contest because of something to do with his wife being murdered. I'd tell you what happens, but I wouldn't want to spoil the confusion for you. Despite all this, for some reason the movie is still pretty enjoyable. It has Fulci's trademark smoky-looking cinematography, is a very surreal, almost dreamlike movie, and Fulci even manages to slip in a zombie character!....well he looks like one anyway. The main thing nagging at me by the end was what exactly was the difference between Killbike, and the Gladiatorial contest? They both seemed pretty much the same to me. A moderately entertaining movie.... it shows that Fulci could still make something decent out of an absolutely pathetic script, and it will always be superior to Ridley Scotts' Gladiator, because it will always be The " New" Gladiators. |
| Entertainment : 2 out of 4 |
| Watchability : 3 out of 4 |
| OVERALL : 2.5 out of 4 |
| If you like this movie , you may enjoy : |
| Reviewed by Blake. |