The New Gladiators



I continue my romp through the filmography of Lucio Fulci with The New Gladiators (1984), a movie that looks promising on paper. In the year 2072 there are two global TV stations, Seven Seas(?) and WBS. These two stations are locked in a ratings war, with Seven Seas winning easily with a show called Killbike. Killbike features men on motorcycles engaging in mortal combat, and the uncontested champion is Drake (Jared Martin). WBS’s highest rated show is a show where people have to not freak out at their own virtual reality deaths, but it just can’t compete. The audience (who, incidentally, we never see in any way, shape or form) wants real violence.


The auditions for Fear Factor are harder than I thought.

WBS executive Cortez decides that their new show will be Battle of the Damned, and it will feature condemned criminals engaging in mortal combat on motorcycles. I’m glad that even 70 years from now TV executives’ first instinct to combat a successful show will be to rip off that show. Even better, WBS is going to have Drake star in their TV show, because in between scenes he was convicted of killing three men who killed his wife.

Drake and the other “contestants” (including Fred Williamson) are kept in a futuristic prison and forced to train. At one point Drake is given a microchip pill by Monk, a friend of his who just happens to work for Cortez. The pill allows Drake to turn off computers by smiling enigmatically at them. I swear I’m not making that up. Drake tries to use this ability to escape, but he is quickly recaptured.


"So if we go through this door we're guest starring on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century? Uh... No thanks."

Meanwhile the network’s psychologist is trying to figure out why Drake won’t kill anybody in VR simulations, even representations of the men who killed his wife. She begins to think he may be innocent of the murders, because, as she states, “I don’t think he’s a killer.”

WHAT? We saw him kill people in the prologue! Killing people was his job! Why would it be so hard to believe that he would kill out of revenge when his wife was murdered before his eyes, and why does this stupid movie ask us to invest in the fact that Drake is “innocent”?

That’s it, I’m done. I’m on strike. I’m sick of stupid Lucio Fulci and his stupid plots and the bad actors and the stupid boy-I-wish-I-was-Sergio-Leone extreme close-ups of actors’ eyes he throws in every five minutes and the way this stupid movie goes from being about the Battle of the Damned TV show to being a “Destroy the Evil Computer” movie. If anyone needs me, I’ll be playing Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.

Posted: Wed - October 6, 2004 at      

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