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Memorable, crazy movie

Just perfect...

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Blistering performances.

All bets are off at a corrupt intergalactic fighting competition where a system removes the fighter's advantage, no matter what species and puts them on an even standing. Made and released in the UK in 1989, like Robot Jox, Crash & Burn, Oblivion and other Charles Band productions the lack of money is obvious but this B-film captures the imagination which many larger budgeted films fail to do. Arena taps into a time when fighting films had peaked and Rocky was deep rooted in the conciseness along with WWF specials. Director Peter Manoogian offers plenty of showdowns. His direction is fine and many of the makeup and special effects still hold up. In a cast of outlandish aliens Claudia Christian features as Quinn and the Christopher Reeve-a-like Paul Satterfield's Steve Armstrong works as the stereotype hero.Despite its clichés and the fact it was never going to win any Oscars its many references to other science fictions and fresh concept makes it an enjoyable low budget science fiction.

An intergalactic fighting competition between champions of various worlds has traditionally been won by a species much larger and stronger than humans. Entering the contest, a human finds he has to battle against not just his opponents and his self-doubts, but the corrupt system.....If you've seen this movie before, you'll already know how bonkers stupid the whole thing is. This is one of those films that I saw trailered on many a straight to video action movie 25-26 years ago, but then when it left the video shelf, it vanished without a trace, and to my knowledge, it's never been on TV or had a DVD release.So thank heavens for NetFlix, as I have now seen one of my legendary lost films that I thought had vanished forever.And it's just how I thought it would be,man absolute cheese fest featuring a non-existent lead who makes Van Damme and Lundgren seem like Olivier.To describe the film is a very heady thing to do. Take The Running Man, Tron, Bloodsport, Barbarella, with the budget of a Troma film, and your almost there.We basically have a guy who can become the next world champion of the titular sport, but I order to do so, he has to fight lots of people in suits, claymation, and puppets. That's the premise of the film.And there's a subplot involving a man with silver paint on his face risking losing everything if our hero wins.As you can imagine, the fights are non existent, so the majority of the time we see our hero from his adversaries perspective, and someone behind the camera hitting him with rubber hands, and it's as fun as it sounds.The effects are dazzlingly awful, but the puppetry is actually rather good for such a low budget film.It's a shame that this wasn't more widely recognised, because this could have been a wondrous TV series.A must for all bad movie fans everywhere.

Remember when the future was going to look exactly like the 1980s? The makers of Arena did--which is probably not terribly shocking, considering the film was made in 1989. In fact, you might say that Empire Pictures was already on the cutting edge of retro-'80s chic: Arena completely fails to acknowledge the coming of a new decade and wallows in big poofy hair, big poofy shoulder pads, and big poofy monster make up. It's terrible, of course, but enjoyable nonetheless, especially if you pay close attention and pick up on the various movie references laced throughout the script. Besides ripping off Star Wars endlessly, Arena also works in a reference to This Island Earth (the interocitor seems to have survived the crash landing of Exeter's spaceship), and the Marx Brothers' secret Horse Feathers password, 'swordfish', is here, too. In short, it's a kitsch delight for those who enjoy extraterrestrial camp.

No, this is not a great movie, and yes it has it's share of problems. I'm not really even sure why I like this film, but I do. I admit that it can be pretty bad at times and extremely cheesy at others, but it still kept me entertained for an hour and half.The story is actually a fairly interesting one, nothing terribly original, but nonetheless interesting. This film is basically just "Rocky" and "Star Wars" thrown together.The acting was nothing to get excited about in the film, but it wasn't all that bad either. There were a few times that were pretty badly done, but overall the acting was just fine. I've got to say something though, Paul Satterfield has an uncanny resemblance to Christopher Reeve and sounds like him too. The entire cast are virtually unknown to me, but there were some familiar faces in the film (still couldn't name them or place where I'd seen them though).The special effects were relatively decent given that I'm sure the budget was REALLY low. The make-up effects were sometimes really good and other times just horrible. Some of the aliens were actually quite well done and pretty cool looking. The outfits and wardrobe of the film was pretty good for the most part, except that stupid fighting uniform thing that Steve Armstrong (Paul Satterfield) wore when in the arena, that needed to go.All in all, I thought this was an ok film. Far from great, but I've seen worse. I definitely wouldn't recommend this to anyone. I would only recommend this film to people that like cheesy sci-fi films. If the words "cheesy" and "sci-fi" don't spark your interest, then go watch something else. In the event that you do see the film, I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading,-Chris