THE NEW GLADIATORS
I know, I know...
"With a battle-cry go forth, we'll just give the people what they want. And what the people want is the senseless slaughter of the gutterslime that litter this nation for cash and prizes!"
-GWAR, "Slaughterama"
Yes, after that lousy ZOOM-fest The Psychic, I said that I never intended to watch another Fulci film again for the rest of my life. But I could no longer resist the temptation to check this one out - it's got a great cover, a great premise that simply HAD to be better executed here than in The Running Man, and it was for sale, cheap. How could I go wrong, right?
Right?
Jared Martin stars as Drake, the "Killbike" champion who comes home and finds his hottie wife (didn't catch her name, but she was a fox) murdered by three rather well-dressed thugs. He kills all three guys, and without ever having to even change what he wears, is arrested, tried, convicted, and sent over to the Coliseum where he's going to do battle for a chance at freedom.
Despite how hokey it is, I liked the model of the futuro-Rome. I liked the hilariously lame "Killbike" battles, where five guys on motorcycle try, apparently, to dismount their lone opponent (this doesn't look very hard for the five guys, but they still manage to fuck it up). These Killbike battles start out with a lot of formation driving, making it resemble the Ice Capades more than any gladiatorial combat. And I REALLY liked the scene where we're shown one TV show where people try to win prizes by undergoing slow and intense torture.
I also liked the "training" sessions for the other combatants, filmed with a strobe effect that surprisingly didn't annoy the shit out of me. However, it DID annoy the shit out of me when such an effect was used during the "dehumanizing" procedure used on our hero to turn him into a killer. Because, you see, he apparently didn't really kill those thugs. So, he's not a killer. And yet he's the Killbike champion, a game where he keeps killing people. Does this make sense to anyone else?
Oh, I'm sorry, I obviously made the mistake of expecting the smallest amount of logic.
How long til Fulci finally buckles under and ZOOMs right in on a chick's face? Twelve minutes. (Fulci's films are probably more fun when there's gambling on when each ZOOM is gonna happen)
The writing is pretty inane, with exchanges like "Go to hell!" "I would! If I thought it would raise my ratings." There's also a reference is made to how the show is being sent out to "all five continents". Assuming that they're not counting Antarctica, which continent just got up and walked away? Also of non-note are time-fillers like "What are we fighting for, huh? What are we fighting for? What the hell are we fighting for?" Other great bad lines are "She's got a great little nose. Too bad she sticks it in other people's business" and "Computers. We built them to be our slaves - we're turning out to be theirs!" Possibly my favorite: "Those bracelets. They keep track of you, then ZAP! Disintegrate you, like a nut!" Like a nut?
The movie's a hoot to look at; like I said, I got a kick out of the futuro-Rome, and there's this ray gun that appears to be made out of Lego. And there are these brain-recordings, which are like the virtual reality tapes in Strange Days, except they're so hi-tech, they can show you things you've experienced as viewed from other angles! Or, maybe, Fulci and company just didn't think that through. (this seems like the case in another scene where four of the contestants are disciplined by being made to hang over an electrified floor. This scene is set up without even the most rudimentary understanding of how electricity works.)
I'm making this all sound like a pretty terrible movie, and make no mistake; it's stupid, it's cheesy, it's lame. But it's also fun, and not always in that so-bad-it's-Fulci way. It's got a couple of pretty foxy women (including Eleanor Gold, sporting an adorable haircut), and it's almost always fun to watch in that "low-budget creation of a future society" way. And that climactic Killbike battle is a real howl of a mess - even if we could remember the characters' names, we wouldn't know who's who because they're all clad in helmets and armor, and the names on their chests are obscured by the handlebars of their bikes. So even if you were enough of a suck to actually grow attached to these people, it won't hurt too bad to see them get impaled, decapitated, blown up, or whatever, because you won't know who's who.
Also known as Fighting Centurions, Rome 2072 AD, Warriors Of The Year 2072, and of course its Italian title Guerrieri dell anno 2072. I don't know if I'd recommend this one, but I'm glad I saw it. I'd be even more glad had I seen it drunk. Hey, that gives me an idea...
(note to self: get drunk)