Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Bezenby Fulci gathers an ensemble cast and almost but not quite gives us yet another Italian post-apocalypse style movie. Is this one post-apocalypse? If so, they missed all those Roman landmarks.This time round, we've got some guy from Dallas, Al Cliver (The Devil Hunter, House of Clocks), Fred Williamson (Black Cobra 1, Black Cobra 2, Black Cobra 3), Claudio Cassenelli (Flavia the Heritic, Hands of Steel, sporting a very strange haircut), Donald OBrien (Mannaja, Emmanual and the Last Cannibals) and Al Yamanouchi (House of Lost Souls, Endgame). George Eastman? He's not here man! Still, with a cast like that you'd think you'd be in for something totally awesome, right? Well, it starts off pretty well, with our Hero (Dallas guy) being a big TV star in some show called Killbike. The thing is, Claudio is an exec for some rival show and wants to up the stakes by having gladiators go toe to toe, to the death, but needs Dallas guy as he draws the big ratings. Three guys turn up and murder our Hero's wife, leading him to kill them in revenge (or does he?). Voila – instant convicted killer TV show type thing. Roll on the carnage! This is where the film stumbles a bit. Instead of Big Fred driving about on a bike chopping heads off people, we get our Hero trying to escape the prison, fighting other prisoners, going up against the guards, and both him and one of the TV exec girls tyring to find out who killed those guys who killed his wife. Plus, an awful lot of strobe effects. And I mean loads.You do get to the action eventually though, and although you'd be expecting blood and gore from Fulci, he's kind of restrained here. There are severed heads flying about the place but The Beyond this is not.Fulci also continues his headache inducing camera techniques he used in the far better Conquest, as, along with all the strobe effects, he has demented visual effects, lights fading on and off, lens flashes and the like. I did like the bikers driving through futuristic Rome and thought perhaps he was making some reference to that scene in Fellini's Roma? Anytthing's possible in Italian cinema.So, New Gladiators is, as they say, not one of Fulci's best. It's not bad, but compared to the sci-fi Joe D'Amato and Enzo Castellari were throwing at us at the same time, it's second tier stuff.Forgot to mention: Al Cliver is dubbed by Nick Alexander, for a change.

smittie-1 Out of all of Fulci's films, this and CONQUEST get derided most frequently. It's a rather unfair reputation, considering the joys to be had from both movies if one is willing to suspend their more critical faculties. THE NEW GLADIATORS operates as a mashing of BLADE RUNNER and ROLLERBALL, with a neon skyline rising out of Rome's antiquities (there's even a giant flashing ad a la BLADE RUNNER) and a populace addicted to and placated by a non-stop stream of reality TV, with prime time fodder like Killbike! mopping up the competition. The personal dramas and motivations of the characters are uninteresting and sometimes unfathomable, though the actors are fun to watch, Fred Williamson in particular. The dialog is often laughable - "He's no murderer, he doesn't have it in him!" said of the main character, who is in fact champion of Killbike! and spends his first few minutes on screen murdering his competitors. The real interest is in the constant dropping of futuristic pop-culture and the filmmakers' invective towards the media. Fulci's cynicism and idiosyncrasies shine through, making THE NEW GLADIATORS a thoroughly watchable B-movie.

Woodyanders Framed for the murder of three guys who killed his wife by an all-powerful megalomaniacal master computer, nice guy reigning "bloodbike" champion Drake (the ruggedly appealing Jared Martin) is forced to engage in a ferocious only one winner allowed mass televised old Rome-style gladiatorial combat game called "The Battle of the Damned" that offers just the right amount of nasty and copious real-life bloodshed the jaded future TV audiences need in order to get their violence fix. Whipped into fierce fighting shape by sadistic trainer Raven (a robustly evil Howard Ross) and befriended by token compassionate chick Sarah (the lovely Eleanor Gold), Drake has to mix it up in lethal combat on elaborately made-up motorcycles with a savage bunch of barbarians who include Al Cliver as a scruffy ape, Hiruiko (Al) Yamanouchi as a feral mohawked chopsocky demon, and almighty blaxploitation bad-a** Fred "the Hammer" Williamson as a cool, composed, cocky and swaggering smooth dude.A most uncharacteristic self-criticizing sci-fi/action picture departure by famed Italian horror movie specialist Lucio Fulci, this suitably violent and gory outing offers a barbed, cynical, corrosive commentary on the bloodthirsty gorehound viewers who enjoy watching Fulci's gruesome fright features by showing a bleakly amoral futuristic society where warring TV stations try to score high ratings by broadcasting excessively brutal and barbaric fare like "The Danger Game," a particularly gross simulated atrocity offering which crassly caters to the lowest common denominator by going heavy on the mondo fake bloodspilling. Fulci co-wrote the acrid, biting script with frequent screenwriter Dardano ("Zombie," "The Beyond") Sachetti, Cesare Frugoni and Elisa Briganti. Riz ("Don't Torture A Duckling," "Cannibal Holocaust") Ortolani supplies a booming, wildly wailing, hard-grooving Goblinesque score. Joseph Pinori's gaudy, luminescent, loud bright color-saturated cinematography gives the film a garishly ornate, glittering, dazzling look that's in equal parts florescent Christmas tree lights glow and blinding pinball machine arcade high-gloss sheen. Fulci stages the killbike sequences with wired, heart-racing gusto, with guys astride motorcycles slicing'n'dicing each other with swords, lances, spiked clubs and hammers. Unique in its genre due to its pointed, self-recriminating exploration of using violence as a cheap titillating device and an obvious precursor to "The Running Man," this funky item makes for a refreshingly unusual and oddly thought-provoking addition to the sci-fi/action genre.

Dario Fulci There's some decent ideas in Lucio Fulci's contribution to the Italian post-nuke sci-fi action sweepstakes of the early '80s, but they're rendered somewhat inert thanks to the wooden acting of the Americans, and the horrid dubbing of the Italians. The Lego-Land-with-Xmas-Lights miniatures don't help, either.And is it me, or did Fred Williamson just disappear from the final scene? He just vanishes. Where did he go? Was he called for reshoots for "1990: The Bronx Warriors?" Was there a summons to loop his dialogue for "Warriors of the Wasteland?" Did he need to attend a Kansas City Chiefs benefit dinner? Who knows?