The Arena (1974) and Ballistic (1995)
Hot Action Babe Double Feature w/ Pam Grier and Marjean Holden
The Arena is an informative and educational film about the gladiatorial fighting contests of Ancient Rome. It tells, with great historical accuracy, the stories of gladiators and their grueling training regimens. No, not really. It’s actually a 70s skin flick starring Pam Grier and Margaret Markov as Mamawi the Nubian queen and Bodicia the pagan princess respectively.
The pair also appeared together in another educational classic, the chicks in prison flick Black Mama White Mama.
The gladiator movie starts with our two heroines being captured by evil Roman centurions and carried off to slavery - in both instances they are engaged in some dance ritual when they are captured. They are placed in an arena to cater to the whims of the gladiators and the audience, that is until a festive food fight inspires their captor that perhaps the woman can fight in the arena as well. Needless to say they do and the crowd loves it, but it causes complications among the women who aren’t keen on killing their fellow slaves. This leads to a slave revolt and a happy ending. I was joking about the educational aspect, but I actually looked it up afterwards and women did fight in the arena, so perhaps it is true to life after all. However, it’s also pretty dull and rather short on skin for a skin flick. For a real Pam Grier classic go with Coffy instead.
Next up is Ballistic, which starts with a shower scene: always a sign of serious B-Movie Skinemax quality. Marjean Holden is getting ready for a night out on her undercover assignment as a “woman of the night.” It turns out she’s actually trying to set up a drug buy so it’s like a double undercover operation (not sure why a street hooker is a good cover for a high level drug buy, but alas). She gets the bad guy in decisive fashion but not without the stirring the ire of her crooked coworkers in the department. This is a running theme throughout the film as near everyone has some shitty and sexist thing to say to her, including her muscle-bound boyfriend. Part of the friction is her reputation has been soiled by her father (Richard Roundtree AKA Shaft), a former cop, now imprisoned for something or another.
At 6-feet tall, Mortal Kombat’s Holden has a real physical presence in the fight scenes, but her opponents for the most part are flailing goofballs. One exception being the main bad guy’s right-hand, Ms. Olympia Cory Everson. They showdown in the film’s climax. Others performers of note are Michael Jai White (of a future Fight Pizza Movie Night) and Vincent Klyn, Point Break surf punk extraordinaire, who show up in some warehouse fight scenes. B-Movie legend Charles Napier also appears as Marjean’s gruff boss. JCVD does not appear.
Ballistic doesn’t make a helluva lot of sense, the dialogue is woeful, and the fight choreography is cheesy below average, but Holden is definitely a babe, the soundtrack is knock off Beverly Hills Cop, and it’s an all around amusing ride.
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