In 2072, the TV networks’ biggest shows are reality competitions like Killbike and The Danger Game, both as nihilistic as they sound. (Isn’t that crazy? I don’t mean those shows, but the idea that TV networks will exist in 2072. Oh, that Lucio Fulci — such a kidder!) The webs’ ante gets upped when the floating station WBS makes plans for The Battle of the Damned!
To be played in Rome’s Colosseum, where the bread-and-circus gladiators once sparred, this surefire ratings grabber forces death-row inmates to participate in games of mortal combat that update Ben-Hur-style chariot races with motorcycles. Among the first round of The New Gladiators (to borrow the film’s title) are Drake (Jared Martin, Fulci’s Aenigma), in the clink for killing the three guys who killed his wife, and Abdul (Italian post-apocalyptic flick staple Fred Williamson, Warriors of the Wasteland), who practices kung fu under disorienting strobe lights.
It’s a terrific idea, not fully realized until the release of the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle The Running Man three years later. The New Gladiators gets too caught up in prepping for the games, as Drake and friends — including Doctor Butcher M.D. himself, Donald O’Brien, as a severely burned ol’ pal with fiber-optic eyes — plot to destroy the show and WBS from within.
Known alternately as Warriors of the Year 2072, the movie certainly bears appeal, yet has more ambition than director and co-writer Fulci (The New York Ripper) has means. This is evident from frame one, when a pan across the cityscape at night aims to evoke the “wow” factor of Blade Runner — unachievable when said cityscape clearly is a model in miniature, akin to a backdrop from your cousin’s Lionel tabletop train set. Fulci gets in one good effect, when a woman’s face melts like a candle. —Rod Lott