It's Burl roaring up to you on his customized dirt bike! Ha ha,
I’m here to review an action picture by the famed Italian horror meister Lucio
Fulci! Old Lucio was better known for his zombie pictures and, before those,
his own crude takes on the giallo
genre (The Lustful Duckling Winks Nine
Times I believe is one of his!), but this futuristic effort takes him out
of his comfort zone and puts him firmly in Death
Race 2000 territory!
I guess technically The
New Gladiators is meant as a cross between Death Race 2000, Rollerball,
The Road Warrior and Blade Runner, but it most closely
manages to rip off The Running Man,
even though that movie hadn’t yet been made! And still it manages to get in
some of Fulci’s trademark grue!
Ha ha, the year is 2072 and everybody likes violent TV! The best-loved
show is a kind of jousting game called Kill
Bike, but the popularity on that one is waning so the crafty, ratings-hungry
robots that run the world decide they need an even bloodier game! Ha ha, they
come up with The Battle of the Damned, which is also a motorcycle game, but
played out by death-row convicts who have nothing left to lose!
A trio of whistling new-wave assassins set in motion a
series of events designed to force Drake, the best dirt-bike warrior of the
future, to take part in the games! Meanwhile Sam, the ruthlessly avuncular Big
Brother type who runs all TV on the planet (or something!) has a nefarious agenda
of his own! And then Fred Williamson shows up just like he did in Warriors of the Wasteland, here wearing
an even more outlandish outfit!
I’ve got to say, this is a silly picture! But it sure is
entertaining! The many shots of the futuristic cityscape, which are meant to
look like Blade Runner but come off
more like a particularly ambitious ad for model toys, get a lot of grief in the
reviews, but I loved them! Sure they look fake, but there’s a strange beauty
there and a conviction of its own effectiveness that carries the day! And there
are many other visual tropes that give this picture its own special look – ha
ha, why use a four-point star filter when a eight-point one will do!
As I mentioned, there’s lots of blood and gore, with dummies
in white jumpsuits suffering many decapitations (remember Eye of the Tiger?) and impalings! There’s also a fellow with a melty
face who reminded me of the Robert Joy character in George Romero’s Land of the Dead! (Maybe Romero thought
“Ha ha, that Lucio has taken enough from me over the years, now I’m going to
borrow something from him!”) But where the movie stumbles for this reviewer is
in its action scenes! Ha ha, there are many more exciting ways to shoot
motocross duels than what Fulci comes up with, that’s for sure! There’s no
particular excitement, and the participants are all pretty anonymous in their
jumpsuits and helmets anyway!
It’s too bad, because this could have been a modern classic
of camp! It’s halfway there at least, so it’s certainly worth watching for the
discerning viewer! I give The New Gladiators two magic palm-rays!
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