-6

I rented this and "Elvis: Aloha From Hawaii."

Guess which one got played through to the end.

I guess it's one of those "watch it by yourself" sorta movies, like The Last Temptation of Christ or Ernest in Africa. It's not something you can really sit around and watch w/your friends, unless you and your friends are all very pretentious.

Alright, I hafta give it to you folks straight. This movie is no good. Just plain rotten. Even by my standards, and I've endured 100's of hours of crap films at least. Here goes:

shot on camcorder? check actors recruited from local laundromat? check ketchup gore and mannequin appendages? check. unbearably long? check. takes itself very seriously? check. bad time guaranteed? oh check.

Forget Ed Wood, H.G. Lewis, Joel Reed, all them guys.. Gary Cohen puts em all to shame with this garbage. I can recommend it only for the true cinema masochist. Alternates to watching this film:

give yourslf a thousand paper cuts. on your tongue. and then wash it all down with tobasco.

treat yourself to a corn syrup enema.

shoot yourself in the face.

Any one of these activities is preferable to enduring this wretched, bloated corpse of a video for a second time. The first time was bad enough..

Go rent it.

Nothing like seeing washed-up blaxploitation actresses further their careers with such shimmering nuggets of bile as this. She has since gone on to bigger and better things, but this film is noticeably absent from her resume.. Hmmm... I wonder why? This is just another mindless t&a flick with some dumb cat fights and forgettable characters. Except for maybe Priscium, a drag queen Roman praetor portrayed masterfully by Sid Lawrence. And some big goofy bald guy who was sort of reminded me of Tor Johnson, one of Ed Wood's old spooks. If you absolutely must know what this garbage is about.. I'll enlighten you. Roman soldiers recruit "beautiful" (read: laundromat recruits) women to be love slaves for the hedonist government officials. When two of the girls, Pam Grier and some blonde chick, start a particularly brutal food fight, those ever-crafty Romans devise a new plan to keep the proles entertained: we'll make these girls fight! So, they make 'em be gladiators. I would've thought that Pam Grier would've used this film to showcase her awesome whupa$$ skills, but.. she didn't. She was suprisingly subdued, actually. Especially for being a Nubian warrior woman. Anyway, after several boring battles, unsaved even by copious amounts of jiggling flesh, the girl gladiators start a revolt and overthrow the government, allowing Pam Grier and blonde chick to escape.

If you're looking for bad movies, this is merely average. There are so many better ones out there, but it is nice to see Pam Grier again. I bet she looks back on this one as a crowning achievement.