Warriors of the Year 2072 – aka New Gladiators

Cast View all

	Jared Martin	Drake
	Fred Williamson	Abdul
	Howard Ross	Raven
	Eleonora Brigliadori	Sarah
	Cosimo Cinieri	Professor Towman
	Claudio Cassinelli	Cortez
	Giovanni Di Benedetto	Sam
	Valeria Cavalli	Susan
	Donald O'Brien	Monk
	Penny Brown	Sybil
	Al Cliver	Kirk
	Mario Novelli	Tango
	Hal Yamanouchi	Akira
	Matteo Corsini
	Omero Capanna	Hitman
	Lucio Fulci
	Cinzia Monreale	Linda
	Franco Moruzzi	Gladiator

Crew View all

Director	Lucio Fulci
Writer	Elisa Briganti, Cesare Frugoni, Lucio Fulci, Dardano Sacchetti
Producer	Edmondo Amati, Maurizio Amati, Sandro Amati
Musician	Riz Ortolani
Photography	Giuseppe Pinori

Trailer

Edition details

Personal

Notes

My quick rating - 4.6/10. I had no idea this movie even existed, but luckily, the crew over at the real independent film company Troma got their hands on it and released it on DVD. I wouldn't normally care about some movie riding the coattails of the cult success of Escape from New York, but when I read that it was made by Lucio Fulci, the king of Italian gore flicks, I had to check it out. Aside from a couple of scenes, there really isn't much of the famed director's camera eye to be seen. The makers here did really pay attention to the synthesizer music to set the tone of every scene, though. The whole idea is quite ahead of its time, as the whole point of reality TV shows is straight-up violence for rating purposes. Granted, we haven't quite hit the motorcycle racing in a gladiator-style ring to the death yet, but give it time. My thesis of "Men are Born Evil" still stands to this day, and I still fully expect to see live executions on TV at some point. Anyway, here the combatants are people on death row, along with their champion deathrider, who is framed for murder just to bring in ratings for the show. The inmates, of course, rebel against authority and attempt to escape. The whole movie is so tongue-in-cheek and really pretty lame, especially by Fulci standards. I am definitely glad I have seen it, but unless you are a fan of City of the Living Dead or Zombie and just need to see what he can do with a sci-fi flick (to my knowledge, this is the only one he has done) then I would pass on it. There is another bonus: Fred Williamson somehow shows up in this one as he often seemed to do in apocalyptic flicks around this time. Even the Italian ones that show a very budget-limited futuristic world.

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