Amazons and Gladiators (2001)

Schlock shot in Lithuanian forests, this seems like a rescramble of Hammer's The Viking Queen keyed into a post-Gladiator trash movie ecology, though it wins points for poaching its villain – name slightly different – from Spartacus and his initial misdeed from Once Upon a Time in America.

Marcus Crassius (Patrick Bergin), capturer of Spartacus, is despatched to govern an outlying province by a jealous Ceasar – later, he gets a letter from Brutus saying Julius will forgive him if he defeats the Amazons – and spends his time despoiling and gloating, throwing games even he admits are somewhat low-budget compared to the Colosseum and luxuriating in petal-strewn baths with topless slaves. On an early raid, he claims one slutty girl (Wendy Winer) as his concubine and torments her little sister by perching her mother on her shoulders with a noose around her neck and a fire under her feet. The mother kicks the girl away and she grows up to be a dancer who stabs the Roman swine who has paid to deflower her. Serena (Nichole M. Hiltz) is rescued by the armoured Amazon Ione (Jennifer Rubin), who works with liberal princess Zenobia (Mary Tamm), and trains as a warrior, cops off with a caring rebel (Richard Norton) and vows vengeance. However, the Amazons are squashed in a barely-glimpsed battle and, after her own sister has ratted her out, Serena ends up in the arena – Norton takes arrows rather than fight her and she fakes a defeat of her best friend, then after her sister is slain she goes one-on-one with the sneering, gloating, hamming Bergin and predictably stabs him. A narrating prophetess claims the Roman Empire, due in history to last another 300 years, was soon to fall, and Hiltz rides off to possible further adventures if a sequel is required.

The massed forces of the Amazons prevail in the plot, but Bergin chews everyone else off the screen, cramming in a wide variety of perfidies. Newcomer Hiltz is okay as the sort of chick who swordfights with a bare midriff and is a deadeye with throwing knives. It's cheap, with a bewildering variety of accents and scrappy action scenes, but it is sort of engaging in a sleazy way. Written and directed by Zachary Weintraub.
KIM NEWMAN

First published in this form here.

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