10/3/07: NEW GLADIATORS
NEW GLADIATORS (Fulci, 1984)
No surprise, Lucio Fulci's NEW GLADIATORS is kinda mediocre. It gets off to a decent enough start, has a good cast, great locations (when they use them), and some fun model effects work. Good premise too, involving competing networks attempting to one-up each other by providing the most bloodthirsty shows they can. One does "Kill Bike" which should be self-explanatory (hint: it involves bikes, and killing) while the other does "Battle of the Damned," a recreation of the classical gladiator theme of forcing convicts to fight each other in an arena.
Sadly, there really isn't enough gladiating in this thing. The second act gets sidetracked early on trying to imitate ROLLERBALL's subplots of supercomputers and warring corporations ... Apparently nobody infomed Fulci that 1) ROLLERBALL was not exactly a big hit, and 2) its subplots were likely to blame for this. Still, when the fighting gets going, its very satisfying, and there's plenty of bloody mayhem on hand even if the editing leaves things a bit muddled at times. Its hard to tell really what the rules of engagement are ... But who cares when a guy gets decapitated while riding a motorcycle!
Oh yeah, Fred Williamson is in it. Boy we don't see him around too much do we. He has a cool scene during the big motorcycle chariot race at the end where an opponent gets dragged behind a bike and Fred takes the opportunity to shoot the poor schlub with a flamethrower (!!!), and his charred smoking corpse does a couple more laps as a bumper accessory. Gotta love Fulci.
Movie gets a lot of points for also imitating BLADE RUNNER, another famous commercial failure that makes one wonder where Fulci was getting his intel from. Most of the BR details are surface only ... Lots of "future" cityscapes with video screens on buildings and shot with fake-looking models, flying cars that look like Spinners, even a dorky "happy ending" where the main guy and gal drive off to sunnier climes from the always-dark metropolis! End credit music stolen from BR too ... And we wonder why the Italian film industry isn't around any more ...
No surprise, Lucio Fulci's NEW GLADIATORS is kinda mediocre. It gets off to a decent enough start, has a good cast, great locations (when they use them), and some fun model effects work. Good premise too, involving competing networks attempting to one-up each other by providing the most bloodthirsty shows they can. One does "Kill Bike" which should be self-explanatory (hint: it involves bikes, and killing) while the other does "Battle of the Damned," a recreation of the classical gladiator theme of forcing convicts to fight each other in an arena.
Sadly, there really isn't enough gladiating in this thing. The second act gets sidetracked early on trying to imitate ROLLERBALL's subplots of supercomputers and warring corporations ... Apparently nobody infomed Fulci that 1) ROLLERBALL was not exactly a big hit, and 2) its subplots were likely to blame for this. Still, when the fighting gets going, its very satisfying, and there's plenty of bloody mayhem on hand even if the editing leaves things a bit muddled at times. Its hard to tell really what the rules of engagement are ... But who cares when a guy gets decapitated while riding a motorcycle!
Oh yeah, Fred Williamson is in it. Boy we don't see him around too much do we. He has a cool scene during the big motorcycle chariot race at the end where an opponent gets dragged behind a bike and Fred takes the opportunity to shoot the poor schlub with a flamethrower (!!!), and his charred smoking corpse does a couple more laps as a bumper accessory. Gotta love Fulci.
Movie gets a lot of points for also imitating BLADE RUNNER, another famous commercial failure that makes one wonder where Fulci was getting his intel from. Most of the BR details are surface only ... Lots of "future" cityscapes with video screens on buildings and shot with fake-looking models, flying cars that look like Spinners, even a dorky "happy ending" where the main guy and gal drive off to sunnier climes from the always-dark metropolis! End credit music stolen from BR too ... And we wonder why the Italian film industry isn't around any more ...
posted by figurebuilder at 1:34 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home