After the sad dearth of Grier that was Fortress 2, I went back to the peak of the exploitation era and watched The Arena (1974), which is indeed ‘Female Spartacus’. So much so that Spartacus is explicitly referenced in the dialogue.

This one stars Pam Grier (obviously) as Mamawi, a Nubian dancer captured by a Roman slave patrol. She co-stars with Margaret Markov’s Bodicia, (who I’m confident is meant to be a Briton but who repeatedly claims to be from Brittany, which is a little bit funny if you’re a big old nerd like me and you know that Britons didn’t colonize Armorica and start calling it Brittany until after the fall of the Roman empire) a druidess and fellow slave. Grier and Markov had previously co-starred in 1973’s Black Mama, White Mama, another classic exploitation flick.

I’ll get right out in front of this thing and mention that there are several instances of forcible sexual assault in this movie, and in one instance it is depicted as a sort of just punishment for one of the film’s villains, so if that’s a non-starter for you, you might want to give this one a miss. For what it’s worth, the first time this happens to a character, as much or more screen time is devoted to the grotesque, leering faces of the men watching on as to the actress’ body, making it pretty clear that the film is not intended to be an amoral spectacle, presenting the assault as pure entertainment, there is a grain of commentary underlying all of the violence, sexual and otherwise, which gets highlighted here and there.

Beyond that element, this is an absolutely classic gladiator/sexploitation flick. Both Margaret Markov and Pam Grier are absolutely gorgeous, and the film paints them in fabulous golden sunlight frequently throughout the runtime. They are joined by Deidre (Lucretia Love, which could be a character name in this flick as well) a cheerfully drunken redhead, and Livia (Marie Louise Sinclair) a roman woman sold into slavery. The women are overseen by the head of the household, Cornelia (Rosalba Neri, as Sara Bay), a frightfully loyal enforcer who answers to Timarchus (Daniele Vargas), the girls’ new owner.

Now, I could watch Pam Grier fold laundry for 90 minutes and be fully content, but luckily she’s given a lot more fun things than that to do in this movie. From her sensual dance performances at the beginning, to her ass-kicking, trident-wielding, bad-assery during the rebellion, every moment with Mamawi on screen is fantastic. There is a brief bathing scene with full-frontal nudity of all the girls, including Pam, which is pretty standard for this kind of skin flick. Otherwise the nudity is mostly restricted to the love/sexual assault scenes, and both Mamawi and Bodicia’s incredibly sheer gladiatrix tops.

The fight choreography ranges in quality, but notably Mamawi seems to visibly improve with practice in a way that feels natural. Having the girls actually learn and grow as fighters, even just a little, rather than be superhuman Amazon warriors from the start was something that I appreciated. Each of the girls also had a distinct fighting style. Mamawi starts off with a sick trident, and makes use of spears later on, and Pam Grier does a fantastic job with her choreo. Bodicia uses a sword, and Markov is believable with it, if not quite as flashy as Mamawi’s more exotic weapon. Deidre notably does not want to fight anyone, and when she is forced to it drives her deeper into drinking. We see this play out through both dialogue and some visual bits involving her gulping down wine during the big fight scenes. She reminds me of a stock character from Vietnam war movies; the pacifist druggie who progressively loses their cool as the tension mounts, and always dies before the credits roll.

The interplay between the women is fairly well done. Livia the Roman is an absurd caricature of a person, but she’s also representative of an attitude that very much exists among some people. Her character fairly well embodies the well known LBJ quotation about white supremacy and its role in keeping the wealthy in power, even down to her making racist remarks about Malawi and Quintus (Jho Jhenkins) and praising her slave master. The other girls each have their own perspective on their captivity and how best to endure or resist it. Bodicia finds solidarity and comfort with the other gladiators, including the terrifying Septimus (Pietro Ceccarelli), and Mamawi embraces the sexual freedom of the gladiator stable while plotting her escape. Deidre drinks. They initially find little in common despite their shared bondage, but the different approaches they take to their situation ultimately contribute to the success of their escape plan.

The actual plot revolves around the arena of Brundisium and the fact that the local crowd are hilariously bored of watching dudes murder each-other. Initially purchased as a lot by one of Timarchus’ servants to work as serving girls, our heroines are thrust into the ring to provide a novel spectacle for the audience. The women predictably are not super jazzed about the prospect of fighting each-other to the death, and the rest of the film details their efforts to survive and to escape.

The editing is very rough, and several scenes end abruptly with hard cuts that don’t seem 100% intentional, like they just ran out of film and so the shot ended. Part of this is up to the transfer I watched not being the best quality, and partly to the fact that it was a cheap B movie when it was made and they used the cheapest available film stock. That doesn’t really excuse the parts where the music cuts out mid-scene, or actions that are the focus of the shot go un-dubbed. The grainy, scratchy, slightly yellowed effect caused by the cheap film is actually kind of cool most of the time. It’s the aesthetic that Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez based their whole careers around, but it’s the real thing rather than a meticulous and expensive facsimile.

By contrast, the cinematography is surprisingly competent, and in places actually quite beautiful. There is a close-up shot of Mamawi’s face as she bears down on a fallen Aristo during the rebellion, with the sun flashing out from behind her hair, that is absolutely gorgeous. I want it as a big print to hang up on the wall.

There is some pretty distasteful homophobia in this picture. One of Timarchus’ primary flunkies is the heavily queer-coded Priscium (Priss-ium) who expresses flamboyant disgust at the idea of touching any of the shudder women. By contrast the sex scenes are genuinely quite artful, and the presentation of sexuality as something that can be used to comfort and heal is a surprisingly positive, and even sensitive one. The contrast between the humanity shown to the women in this picture and the queer stereotype is one of the elements that makes it hard to judge this one overall. I love this movie, but I don’t like a lot of things about it.

Ultimately this film represents, for me at least, the archetypal exploitation flick. The basic draw is sex, violence, and spectacle, but once you’re invested in the premise the film has some solid social commentary underpinning its narrative. A lot of Pam Grier’s films from this era, specifically, embody this duality between low-brow hind-brain engagement and a fairly radical political understanding. It makes a lot of sense, in a way. These kinds of B movies were made outside the big studio system for the most part, and thus were saddled with the dual attributes of not having any money and not having to self-censor to keep the bigwigs happy. Foxy Brown has a whole scene where Black Panthers discuss the distinction between justice and revenge, and at what point the use of violence becomes justifiable in the pursuit of either. It also has a lot of Pam Grier’s incredible rack. The Arena doesn’t present nearly so cogent a thesis on violence as Foxy Brown, but it does a passable job, and it embraces the camp and spectacle of 50’s gladiator films in a way that is enjoyable and fun entirely on its own merits.

I’m going to give this one 4/5 stars. Half a star off for the rough editing and music, and half a star for the presentation of rape as a deserved punishment for one of the characters, and in particular the somewhat indulgent way that that assault is lingered on by the film. I know I filled a lot of space talking about this movie’s flaws, but it is eminently watchable, and far less gross in the way that it presents (most of) the sexual content than a lot of its contemporaries. I heartily recommend this movie to Pam Grier appreciators, Gladiator aficionados, and habitual schlock consumers.