WARNING!
You know what? It's an R-Rated Drive-in
flick! You know what that means: the
review is recommended for mature audiences.
|
aka Naked Warriors
Ah, the grandeur that was Rome... is not in
evidence here.
What did you expect? It's largely a Women in Prison
picture, set in the heyday of the Roman Empire.
In faraway Brittany and Nubia, Roman soldiers break
up religious functions and kill everyone except the priestesses:
the fair-haired Bodicia (Margaret Markov) and the fiery Mamawi (Pam
Grier, arguably the queen of WiP movies). They are saved "for
the market".
This
is a tad curious; admittedly, this is set during a time of great
expansion (then, practically any point you talk about the Empire
is a period of conquest), so I can almost accept the Roman
forces riding in like the motorized thugs of Road Warrior
and laying waste to everything. It's the largest military force
in the world acting as a farm team for the slave trade that leaves
me scratching my head. Sure, prisoners of war ended up as slaves
- empires are run on the backs of slaves - but that means you've
got to keep somebody alive to enslave, and not just the photogenic
ones. Well, he sighed, the story had to be set up somehow...
So Bodicia and Mamawi find themselves on the same
chain in a slave market, along with Deirdre (Lucretia Love) and
Livia (Marie Louise), herself a Roman sold into slavery (though
we're never told why). They are bought as a lot by a mincing fellow
appropriately named Priscium (Sid Lawrence). "Handle them gently,"
says the slave trader. "I won't handle them at all!"
gaily asserts Priscium. (I also may be nuts, but Icould swear that
the guy in the crowd who offers a mere four pieces of gold for the
women is Roger Corman. Well, it should be, anyway.)
Priscium,
it seems, is the procurer for the manager of the local Arena, Timarchus
(Daniele Vargas), for whom the women will serve all sorts of functions.
First though, the women are introduced to the Lady of the House,
Cornelia (Lady Frankenstein's
Rosalba Neri, here still dubbed Sara Bay for us Amurricans). Cornelia
orders them to strip in the courtyard, that they may be washed,
This is done primarily because the Roman Empire had not yet invented
showers, and Crap Movie Law dictates that every WiP movie shall
have at least one shower scene. When Bodicia refuses, Cornelia takes
off her belt and smacks her into compliance; when the others still
balk, a pair of passing gladiators help out, much to the amusement
of all the other slaves in the courtyard.
Timarchus,
you see, also heads up the consortium that owns all the gladiators,
this being the days before the Department of Justice would bust
up such an obvious monopoly. As the girls are meant to sell wine
to the games' patrons, Cornelia takes them to the Arena for their
orientation, and they are shocked to see that the two men who aided
in their stripping have just participated in the week's fight, and
one lies bleeding to death in the sand. Bodicia comforts the dying
man, while the victor, Marcus (Vassili Karas) sorrowfully states
it was the will of the crowd.
At the post-Game celebration and orgy (those
Romans knew how to party, eh? Toga! Toga!
Toga!), Bodicia and Mamawi are presented to the partiers,
carried in a gilded cage. Mamawi proceeds to dance for the besotted
group, while Bodicia slaps one Roman who paws her, drawing the wrath
of one of the slave owners, Lucilius (Paul Muller, whom I kept referring
to in the Lady Frankenstein review as "Joe Flaherty".
It's a regular reunion! Where's poor Joseph Cotten?). Lucilius declares
he will "teach her a lesson" and rapes her on the spot
(Agh! Excessive back hair!).
Timarchus and his cronies are seeking a way to boost
sagging ticket sales, or whatever they had for gladiatorial games,
and announces that for next week's fight, it will be two men against
one, the one being the gladiators' instructor, the giant Septimus
(Peter Cester), and the two last week's victor Marcus, and the black
gladiator, Quintus (Jho Jhenkins). And Cornelia reveals that each
man, the night before he fights, has his choice of the women the
night before (Livia: "Oh Gods! Do you mean we have to satisfy
their animal heat?"). Septimus already has a mate, the slave
Lucinia (Mary Count), with whom he has a child; Marcus chooses Bodicia,
and Quintus, Mamawi.
Marcus,
certain that he will die at the hands of Septimus, tries to send
Bodicia away, but she insists on staying and comforting him; when
she speaks of escape, he truthfully answers, "To where?"
After all, the entire world, at this point, consisted of the Roman
Empire. Quintus tries to attack Mamawi like an animal, with the
result that she threatens to cut his throat with a piece of broken
crockery and shout, "The Romans have taught you to live like
an animal! Have they also taught you to forget your past?"
But then, a smack upside the head from Pam Grier is as good as a
fiery soul kiss from any other woman, so soon both couples are going
at it... after all, it's been almost five minutes since we last
saw naked female flesh.
Things go rather downhill from there for our slave
sweethearts as Septimus proves that he may have taught the other
two everything they know, but he didn't teach them everything he
knows, and both women watch the men they loved the night before
die in the sand. That night, as the girls work in the kitchen for
the post-Game feast, Livia proves that you don't have to be male
to be a prick, as she says, "All Septimus did was kill a black."
This provokes a food-and-cat fight of extraordinary magnitude, causing
Priscius to run whimpering to the steambath where Timarchus and
the others are trying to brainstorm another way to bring in the
proles: "How about huge serpents? Would not huge serpents entice
them?". They sure talked funny in the old days.
The men stick their head into the tumultuous kitchen,
then withdraw them quickly again, for fear of having their heads
cut off by flying tomatoes or something. They eventually send in
Septimus; the big galoot, concerned that Lucinia may be hurt, breaks
up the party single-handed. In the aftermath, one of Timarchus'
yes-men realizes they have just been handed the special event that
will bring the punters in: put the women in the Arena.
So
the women find themselves training alongside the men, albeit not
very seriously. The first match is between Bodicia and Deirdre;
Deirdre, who has been stealing wine since the very first scene,
is too inebriated to even hold her sword, finally collapsing on
the ground in a drunken stupor; the crowd takes it all as a major
joke, and cheer spectacularly.
That night, Lucinia has a dream, that she will fight
and die in the Arena. The sleepy Septimus tells her that will never
happen, and urges her to go back to sleep.
The first fight having been such a popular success,
Timarchus schedules another for the next day, and it is the grudge
match we've been waiting for: Mamawi vs. Livia. Once on the sands,
however, Livia proclaims to the crowd that she was born a Roman.
The crowd, already in an ugly mood, gets positively surly: "Will
you murder our children before us?" Cravenly, Timarchus orders
another slave, any slave, to take Livia's place. All the
others, however, are working the crowd... all of them, that is,
except Lucinia.
If there is one thing a study of literature teaches
us, it is this: if you live in an ancient civilization, do not
ignore dreams.
Lucinia, of course, loses to Mamawi (Septimus must
be restrained by several other gladiators to prevent his intervention
and subsequent execution) and when the Nubian proves reluctant to
obey the crowd and kill her opponent, the Roman archers step to
the plate and nick her arm in warning. Staring down the barrel of
a loaded bow, Mamawi must kill Lucinia to save her own life - something
Livia does not let her forget that night. (We are now pretty damn
certain that Livia is going to come to a sticky end.)
Business
is booming, so Timarchus decides on an unprecedented third
Game in one week - this one featuring the winners of the first two
matches, Bodicia vs. Mamawi. Bodicia claims her right to the man
of her picking that night, surprising many with her choice: Septimus.
But the wily Briton wants to be alone with the grieving gladiator
for a reason: he knows the way through the catacombs beneath the
town, and Bodicia begs him - for the sake of his daughter, who might
herself one day be forced to fight in the games - to help them all
escape. Septimus, still sobbing, agrees.
So all the women - even the unwilling Livia, brought
along so she can't tattle - sneak out to the catacombs, and wait
there for their guide. But Septimus has other ideas, and breaks
into Timarchus's chamber to assassinate him. He is thwarted in this
by the Roman soldiers guarding Timarchus, and the slave owner -
chewing the scenery and his bedsheet (in that order), orders Septimus
to be crucified, over the dismayed protests of the Centurion.
Apparently the women get tired of waiting for
Septimus and go back to their quarters, since the next time we see
them, they are suiting up for the Arena. Cornelia tells them that
Timarchus is so giddy over surviving the assassination attempt,
that he will consider giving the winner of today's fight her freedom.
Bodicia tries to convince Mamawi that there is another way, but
Mamawi is convinced her freedom lies only through the Arena, and
the death of her opponent.
The
expected donnybrook occurs, with Mamawi winning; however, rather
than killing Bodicia, she instead demands the freedom promised her,
as victor. To Timarchus' shock - and okay, to the audience's as
well - the crowd agrees with her. When the archers are ordered to
kill Mamawi, instead several of the girls in the stands pop up with
their own bows and arrows (Wha-? How -? How did they learn
to - ? Aaaghh! Never mind!) and start porcupining soldiers. Deirdre
pushes Timarchus into the Arena, where he cowardly drops an offered
sword and snivels for his life rather than fighting for it. After
he is dispatched by Mamawi and Bodicia, the crowd decides this is
fine spectacle indeed.
In fact, alongside the innovations with which we usually
credit the Romans - water systems, roads, bureaucracy - we can also
add The Soccer Hooligan, as the crowd riots and storms Timarchus'
box, throwing all the inhabitants of the box into the Arena. (You
just can't trust a drunken mob anymore.) Well, almost everyone
winds up in the killing field, except for Lucilius (who cagily crawled
out when he saw which way the wind was blowing) and Livia, who gets
her prescribed comeuppance, gang-raped by the mob. Yes, it would
have been much more satisfying if Mamawi had been finally allowed
to whack that smirk off her Roman face, but in the WiP film, one
accepts what justice one can. More soldiers arrive, gladiators storm
out of their pens, and the carnage - and our climax - starts in
earnest.
This
is the next Great Tradition of the WiP picture, the Jailbreak In
Which Damn Near Everybody Dies (oh, I'm sorry - did I spoil
anything for you?) . Our surviving trio, Bodicia, Mamawi and Deirdre,
break out of the Arena along with several other gladiators just
as Lucilius arrives with more soldiers. After all the other gladiators
whose names we never bothered to learn are killed (including one
who was apparently just standing there, minding his own business),
the trio take refuge in those catacombs again. The Centurion receives
orders that his garrison is to return to Rome, and offers the angry
Lucilius only a token force - on a time limit - to take down into
the labyrinth.
Well, a couple more dead women later - and one of
them is Deirdre, whom I was actually sorry to see go - the remaining
soldiers balk at leaping across an abyss so deep that we are never
shown it (yeah, that's why we're never shown it, it's so deep, yeah....)
leaving it up to Lucilius to hurl himself to the opposite side and
go all Terminator on our two remaining slaves. I've already killed
the ending for you, so I'll reveal that Lucilius gives a sword a
new home (in his back), Bodicia and Mamawi make it out and apparently
find a way to safety, also according to Crap Movie Law. Although
they do not swear to come back and destroy the Roman Empire, which
would have completed the Crap Movie Trifecta. The end.
Well, that's generally the toughest part - the plot
synopsis. The Arena progresses more or less logically, along
established lines. There's not a whole lot of new ground broken
here, but the story does keep things moving briskly, alternating
between skin and fight scenes. It's not as gritty as, say The
Big Bird Cage, nor as exploitative (is that even a word?)
as Love Camp 7,
but it is fairly entertaining.
Although
there is the usual amount of the "Oh come on" factor
to be found here, there is also evidence that some actual effort
was made to keep the history on the up and up. Smaller towns in
the Empire did indeed have their own bloodsport arenas. The Spartacus-inspired
slave uprising is mentioned at least twice, both times in a way
that seem to indicate that it had happened just a few years previous.
Given that the uprising occurred somewhere between 71 and 73 BC,
and the first mention of female gladiators crops up around 63 BC,
it indicates some actual thought went into the plotting.
Juries are still out, however, on how much actual
death went on in those Arenas. A certain amount of the fights
resulted in dead contestants, certainly, but if there is one thing
the owners seems concerned about in The Arena, it's the economics
of the situation. Training a good gladiator was a lengthy, relatively
expensive process - you had to pay for upkeep until he was good
enough or famous enough to realize a profit on your investment.
Getting them killed willy-nilly would simply be bad business. But
for the sake of drama, of course, death must be the inevitable outcome
of the Games, at least in the realm of movies. Just as everyone,
whether from Brittany or faraway Nubia, apparently speaks Latin.
The
cast is an attractive lot, and most hold up their end of the movie
well. The lovely Rosalba Neri is fairly wasted as the villainous
Cornelia, but Lucretia Love as the drunken Deirdre is not only perpetually
cute, but manages the neat trick of being the Comic Relief without
also being Odious. The team of Margaret Markov and Pam Grier had
explored similar territory the year before, in Eddie Romero's Philippine
WiP flick, Black Mama, White Mama; the problem here is Markov's
relative blandness simply pales next to Grier's earthy naturalism.
That's a problem sadly inherent in playing the hero or heroine,
and Markov is not a sufficiently forceful actress to overcome that
hurdle. Pam Grier is - Pam Grier. She gets naked several times during
the movie. These two factors combined make this required viewing
for most of us heterosexual male Crap Movie fans.
The male contingent of our cast is a sad lot, though
much of their performance is damaged irreparably simply by the obvious
dubbing. No amount of dubbing, however, could excuse Daniele Vargas'
overacting as Timarchus. His eyerolling, sheet-chewing scene when
he condemns Septimus to death could likely be used as proof for
the (now discredited) theory that Rome went mad from drinking water
poisoned by lead piping. Sid Lawrence can be forgiven, he was told
to be a cliché as Priscium, and he is a 
cliché.
Paul Muller's Lucilius, however, is a nicely restrained, steady
performance by a pro.
Though credited to Steve Carver, the IMDb credits
the movie's direction to the now-legendary Joe D'Amato. This does
seem to make some sense, as Carver's filmography is solidly rooted
in American soil, and Arena is an obviously foreign production.
D'Amato is in the credits as cinematographer, under one of
his thousand names (and apparently his real one), Aristide Massaccesi.
While not as explicit as D'Amato's later work (like Porno Holocaust)
nor as gut-wrenchingly bad (like Troll 2), Arena does
show signs of both traits, while not wallowing in either. Like I
said, it's entertaining, even affecting in several scenes, which
elevate the movie above mere drive-in fare.
There is, for instance, the scene where Lucinia is
stoically dressed in armor for the Arena, knowing that she is going
to die, all under the sad, watchful eye of her five year-old daughter.
And the scene where, as the soldiers prepare to crucify him, Septimus
states that man should die as he lived, and the Centurion silently
hands him a shortsword. Septimus, however, apparently did not see
Gladiator, as he thankfully accepts the weapon and guts himself.
It is also worth mentioning that, unlike a certain
other multi-million dollar Roman bloodsport extravaganza, I could
see and comprehend fully everything that happens during the
fight scenes in The Arena - even though I was watching the
dreadfully cropped Concorde DVD. That counts for a lot with me,
and proves that sometimes, the old, cheap ways really are the best.
