Fantasy Flix: Kingdom of Gladiators (2011)

Friday, April 26, 2013

Kingdom of Gladiators (2011)

Director: Stefano Milla
Writers: Stefano Milla, Marco Viola

A king makes a pact with an ancient demon and after years of ruling his kingdom in peace, the demon has come to collect. Now a group of rival gladiators must fight for the survival of the kingdom.

Kingdom of Gladiators is a title that has been used before. I tend to like gladiator movies (Spartacus, Gladiator, etc.) so I was happy to find another new one I could sink my teeth into.

Title: 7

The plot is pretty simple, and (again) one you would find in a typical D&D scenario. King makes a pact with a demon who comes to collect. Adventurers have to go on a quest to defeat the demon, yada yada yada. It was not poorly done. The camera work on this movie is actually pretty good. It was able to hide the fact that the fight scenes are pretty poor. Combinations of slow motion and camera shakes are pretty good at hiding poor action.

Plot: 5

There really isn't a lot of blood and gore in this movie considering the amount of killing. Most of the "blood" doesn't make it's appearance until the "final blow". I thought some of the death scenes were pretty good. I'm not a big fan of CG blood, but it wasn't too terrible here.

Death Scenes: 5

So far you're probably thinking you should check this movie out. I took on the ratings scale of Kevin Bachelder's Saturday B Movie Cast which can make the movie sound pretty good based on the first few ratings. But let me tell you, this isn't a very good movie at all. I've seen worse, but this is pretty bad. I'd have to say the main reason (besides the sets and the costumes which look very LARPy) is the acting. There is no stand out here to speak of. It's all pretty terrible.

Acting: 3

There's isn't a lot of special effects to speak of. (If you don't count CG blood). Just some light effects to depict some magic. They aren't poorly done, and in fact I give them some props for not trying too much.

Special Effects: 4