Basically a women's prison movie set in an Imperial Roman slave quarters, with all the soft flesh and catfights that come with it. They even manage to get a little satire on ancient Roman society in--leave it to the Italians to manage something like that.
Meet our heroines: Bodacious Blonde Bodicia (Margaret Markov), virgin priestess abducted from Brittany, and Black Mamawi (Wow-ee!), (Pam Grier) nubile from Nubia. Dusty off the slave block, it's the perfect excuse to strip them and hose them down to ready them for "The Arena". And what a sad collection of fellow fightesr we find there: Dig the red-haired combatant with the comb-over, and what an unfortunate and unsightly show of flab in the gladiators' procession. Trivia here says they were stuntmen: in that case, Italy has some of the most out-of-shape stuntmen in the world, which would also explain all the bad action scenes in their movies.
Everything here is strictly bottom of the barrel, but the girls get some nifty costumes for combat: Check out Pam's mod chainmail! She is at her loveliest here, and though I'd never call her deep, her performance is by far the best of the worst
There's a feel-good fantasy grrl-power climax, then a never-ending me-too feeling denouement in which all the men get theirs.
In the midst of all this mess there tries to be a "message" which gets lost in all the ludicrousness, but I was struck by how our black slave's righteous pronouncements on freedom and equality are still having to be said 50 years later.
