The Arena (1974) Movie Review

The Arena (La rivolta delle gladiatrici, Naked Warriors) is a 1974 exploitation sword-and-sandal film directed by Steve Carver (Big Bad Mama), produced by Roger Corman (along with the Italian company Rover Film) and written by the couple of John William Corrington and Joyce Hooper Corrington. It stars blaxploitation queen Pam Grier, Margaret Markov (who also paired up with Grier in Black Mama White Mama), Lucretia Love, Paul Muller and Daniele Vargas. The film was remade in Russia for the direct-to-video market in 2001 under the same title by director Timur Bekmambetov.

In Brundisium, during Roman times, slave girls are captured and taken in by the fiendish Timarchus who organizes deadly events at the local colosseum, involving gladiators fighting for their lives. When Timarchus pits female gladiators against each other, the women are now in peril and a revolt is planned in order to survive together.

Taking advantage of the women's-lib movement and the recent success of several of his women-in-prison films, Roger Corman made this small but effective little film that took the core concept of the prison genre and mixed it with some good old European peplum action in roman times, slightly based on Spartacus. The result is a very fruitful and refreshing take on the subgenre with a very rich story. 

It was Shot by Joe D'Amato, who gives the movie a very dynamic visual flair with a lot of very solid shot compositions, rapid zooms that accelerate the tension, swift camera movements and careful lighting that adds a very elegant flavor to the crummy and limited sets. The typical limitations in budget and resources are well handled by the crew and the director in order to make it look and feel more expensive than what it already is.

Since this is essentially a historical version of the women-in-prison genre but transported into a period setting, it has the very basic themes of revolution against the oppressive forces of society, focusing on the struggles of women and/or slaves against the dominant order that forces them to fight among each other for their entertainment. Predictably, the film ends with a slave revolt and the women fighting their way out of their shackles.

The different conflicts the writers gave to the characters are quite solid and they all add to the story and it's theme in a very real way, often the script puts the spotlight on the effects the savage gladiator fights have on the people who suffer through them and how certain groups of people are so desensitized or brought up believing it is natural and normal, ideas that are challenged by the wiser or less conformist characters. Pam Grier's character is also put in a very interesting moral dilemma when she is in the arena, which affects her relationship with other slave gladiators.

With a magnificent final battle, a sense of doom and misery all throughout, without ever feeling like a cheap or dumb scenario, the film achieves a very legitimate feel and flavor due to the filmmakers creating a sound storyline with deeper characters and issues than usual as well as a better pace and dramatic organization of the story than average.

Very recommended low budget exploitation affair with some nice battles and a captivating story.

Slayers The Motion Picture (1995) Anime OVA Review

Slayers The Motion Picture, also known as Slayers Perfect, is a 1995 adventure fantasy comedy anime OVA directed by Hiroshi Watanabe, who would be in charge of directing all of the Slayers OVA specials and movies from this point on. It was written by Kazuo Yamazaki (who is known for directing several episodes of Urusei Yatsura), this would be his first and only writing credit in the Slayers franchise. The cast features the great Megumi Hayashibara, Maria Kawamura, Osamu Saka, Tessho Genda, Yuri Shiratori and Mahito Tsujimura. Perfect was one of the very first animated entries in the Slayers franchise created by Hajime Kanzaka, as it was released on July 29, 1995, three months after the TV series started airing.

Strange nightmares haunt sorceress Lina Inverse who, along with her companion and adversary, Naga the Serpent, travels to the hot springs of Mipross. When the magical waters turn out to be fake, the girls realize a bunch of bandits own them, under the command of the Great Master, who is involved with the elves seen in Lina's visions.

These early Slayer stories in the timeline are among my favorites, that's mostly because of the inclusion of fan-favorite sexy sorceress Naga the serpent, whose chemistry and constant clashes with Lina create some of the funniest moments in the franchise because of the very evident contrast (physical, moral, personality-wise) between the two girls. This first OVA really takes advantage of that by pretty much establishing how much Lina can't stand her but has to team up with her in cleverly conceptualized situations to face a bigger enemy.

The storyline I felt was well handled, what's initially just a mystery eventually is explained to the audience in small doses with very good pace and rhythm. Having Lina and Naga encounter several quirky secondary characters as their journey is either interrupted or disrupted by imaginative enemies and fun obstacles was a good way to structure the film. It's not really as streamlined as one might think, and there's a tendency towards a more fragmentary type of narrative, making some of the events feel slightly disjointed but the script is decent enough to tie everything together even if it's to a small degree in order for the plot to make sense feel cohesive, it never feels like it's just random scenarios strung together.

There are also some differences with the anime series that are established in this first movie, things that will become recurrent in the OVA franchise. First up is Lina being more hardcore with her magic, she's slightly less joyful than in her introductory scene in the show and she also doesn't mind killing or hurting bandits and doesn't think twice about things like that. Another thing is that the sexual jokes and raunchy jokes based on Lina's body are also more prominent and emphasized in these OVA's overall. Some more graphic bits of imagery are also present here. 

By now you can tell that since the market is for direct-to-video consumers the sensibility is a bit more edgy and daring. Not to a weird degree but enough to realize the tone isn't exactly the same as the series, a divergence that helps to make these OVA's stand out.  

If you wanna start with the OVA movies instead of the shows this is a good place to begin, you don't need any real knowledge of the lore and most of the important things you need to know are introduced here anyway. If you are a Slayers fan but somehow you haven't seen it, then I would recommend you to give it a go!