Amazons and Gladiators

Frankly I'm surprised there hasn't been more of these cut-rate costume epics since Ridley Scott's GLADIATOR proved the genre was ripe for re-cycling. The only other video exploitation film that I'm aware of besides this one has been Roger Corman's remake of THE ARENA, which is a cut above AMAZONS AND GLADIATORS because it's visually more exciting, sexier and has better Playboy bunnies in the lead-babe parts. For the most part, A&G is a reasonably well-performed actioner with a sneering, indulgent performance from Patrick Bergin as Crassus (of SPARTACUS fame), a Roman Leader pissed off with his new assignment and taking out his anger on the local folk. Among the local folk are a couple of babes who end up joining a local tribe of Amazon babes, who eventually give Crassus his comeuppance. For my tastes, there's too little nudity and sex in this feature to make it a first-class exploitation gem; and the violence and fight choreography are only satisfactory. When you're dealing with restricted budgets and cliche genre material, it's absolutely necessary to go over the top with the obligatory Roman orgies, arena violence and flesh peddling, particularly when you're not governed by the pandering PG-13 standards of the major studios. This isn't a bad B-movie for a night's rental, but if you're going to add a low-budget Roman opus to your DVD collection, you're better off with the Corman remake of THE ARENA.

The three forces in the universe, in order of strength, are the force that bonds magnets together, the force that bonds protons together, and the force of heroine warrior worshipping energy you feel while watching Amazons & Gladiators, a film by Beyond Films, MBP films and Drotcroft Ltd. Apparently raising enough money to make a movie about heroine warriors takes 3 studios.

Men have long waited for a movie about the Amazons, a movie which portrays Amazons as independant, intelligent, freedom fighting warriors instead of senile monsters like in Land of the Prehistoric Women. This one has good sights of heroines wielding swords, heroines wearing armor, heroines lifting heavy objects, heroines stabbing abusive dictators. If the same movie was made with Jodie Foster, Demi Moore, Ali Larter, or Radha Mitchell, had a bigger budget, a better script, better lighting, better acting it might have been one of the best heroine movies ever.

Unfortunately, there's only acting in the academic sense. The characters wear costumes, read lines, and sometimes move around.

You're better off watching it with the sound off. All the shots are closeups of a tree, building, or fighting ring. There's no wide shot of the Amazon homeland, a Colosseum, or a palace. The weather is consistently dreary. The production is so bad, you might think anyone sitting through this movie was insane but undoubtedly many flat broke, unmarried, male breadwinning gene deprived, SUV impaired men have watched it over and over.

Well, the DVD's cover does a good (but tricky) job. You think it might be a relatively nice movie shot for TV. Like Helen of Troy, Jason and the argonauts, or Odyssey.

But actually, the only reason to see this movie is for the few beautiful, and half-naked women who try to cope with a terrible director and a really bad script and story based on Ridley Scott's Gladiator. Especially the little girl in the beginning acts really bad. It was quite disappointing. I hope some of the actors get a break in the future.

The movie screams it was very low-budget. They must have used except the forest shots, 5 or 6 scenes, most of them in a dressed back-lot.

The worst mistake (except inaccuracies like amazons in the same era with romans) was that everyone is clean. In that period women didn't look like a Playboy centerfold. And people were dirty-looking. They look extremely sharp. Like they took their furs from the laundry! LOL!

Anyway, as I said, if you pass one the beautiful babes, a Xena episode is far more dramatic and action-packed.

I don't regret for my $2 for the DVD rental though. Even B-movies and first-time actors got to make a living.

I guessed the film would be terrible, and indeed it was. Really crappy fighting scenes (seems like they were constantly fighting in slow-mo, assuring not to hurt eachother with their toy weapons), terrible acting (did they even retake a single scene? Can't give credit to a single actor), laughable costumes (at least when looking on the romans and the half-naked amazons in such a cold climate).

Don't ask me about the story and don't ask me about the silly clichées. Read a book instead of watching this film, go feed your goldfish. Anything.

Just like the other Dutch guy I was mislead by a 1towatch sticker on it, and all I got was bad acting,bad script,ridiculous costumes,historical inaccuracies,insipid feminist propaganda... nothing but Xena type garbage.

I was at least expecting some exciting (sword)fight scenes , but even that was missing.Actually, the only exciting scene in this movie was when Wendi Winburn got naked out of the bath (nice ass!) and I think that says enough.Oh, there's a nice plot twist in it,too !But that's about it.

I will at least give it a 3-star rating for the nudity.