There are movies that predict the future, movies that warn us about the future, and movies that assume the future will involve a human short-order cook beating the living shit out of rubber aliens for money. Arena belongs proudly to that third category. Peter Manoogian's 1989 Empire Pictures oddity takes Rocky, fires it several thousand years into space, fills the background with creatures rejected from the Mos Eisley cantina for being too goddamn weird, and somehow plays the whole thing almost completely straight. There is an intergalactic boxing league. Humans haven't competed successfully in decades. The reigning champ is a giant horned bastard named Horn. And somewhere in the middle of all this is Steve Armstrong, a broke human dishwasher who discovers that apparently the fate of our species rests upon his ability to punch extraterrestrials in the face. Cinema used to understand us.
Steve is working in a restaurant aboard a massive space station when circumstances reveal that the guy can fight. This attracts the attention of Quinn, played by Claudia Christian, who sees something marketable in the reluctant human and convinces him to enter the Arena. The problem is that humans aren't exactly respected competitors anymore. Alien fighters are bigger, stronger, uglier, and equipped with anatomical advantages that presumably aren't covered by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Steve nevertheless begins working his way through the competition, and before long he's the intergalactic underdog everybody wants to see. Naturally, the people controlling the sport aren't thrilled about this development, because apparently corruption survives thousands of years of human progress, faster-than-light travel, contact with extraterrestrial civilizations, and whatever technological miracle allows bartenders to serve drinks to creatures with six mouths.
The great pleasure of Arena is the world surrounding that incredibly simple story. Empire may not have had Star Wars money, but nobody seems to have told the production crew, so they just started building aliens anyway. The place is crawling with them. Background aliens. Fighting aliens. Drinking aliens. Gambling aliens. Aliens who exist solely because somebody in the makeup department apparently had some foam rubber left over on Thursday afternoon. Michael Deak and the effects crew populate the station with an astonishing parade of prosthetics, masks, mechanical creatures, and gloriously tactile weirdos. Some look terrific. Others look like they escaped from a regional haunted house. I love every goddamn one of them. This is exactly the kind of world-building that low-budget genre filmmaking once did out of necessity: don't tell us we're in a galactic melting pot, shove twenty rubber monsters into the bar and let them start ordering drinks.
Paul Satterfield plays Steve with the square-jawed sincerity the material requires. The easiest version of Arena would constantly elbow the audience in the ribs, reminding us that everybody involved understands how silly this is. Manoogian wisely avoids that shit. Steve wants to win. Quinn wants him to win. Horn wants to crush him. Everybody treats interspecies boxing as though it were absolutely the most important sporting event in the known universe, and because they believe it, eventually we do too. Claudia Christian gives Quinn enough grit to keep her from becoming merely the manager/love-interest machinery, while Hamilton Camp wanders through the picture looking perfectly at home surrounded by aliens. Marc Alaimo, meanwhile, brings exactly the sort of oily menace you want lurking around a futuristic combat sport. Nobody is trying to transcend the material. They're trying to make the material work.
And then there are the fights. Arena understands something painfully simple that too many modern effects spectacles forget: geography matters. We know where the fighters are. We see bodies collide. The alien makeup becomes part of the combat rather than decoration pasted around it. Horn, especially, is exactly what the movie needs—a giant practical-effects nightmare who looks capable of folding our hero into a carry-on bag. There is something wonderfully satisfying about watching a human being square up against an enormous latex monster and thinking, yes, this is apparently what we've decided to do tonight. The effects occasionally expose the limitations of the budget, but who gives a shit? I'd rather watch an ambitious movie occasionally reveal the seams in its monster suit than watch another perfectly rendered digital creature with all the physical presence of a screensaver.
That's why Arena deserves better than being remembered merely as another dusty title from the back wall of the video store. It is goofy as hell, absolutely, but it is also imaginative, sincere, colorful, and bursting with handmade science-fiction personality. Empire Pictures looked at Rocky, looked at Star Wars, checked whatever money was left in the company bank account, and apparently said, "Yeah, we can fucking do that." They couldn't, of course. Not really. But they tried so enthusiastically that somewhere along the way Arena developed an identity entirely its own. It isn't great science fiction. It isn't great sports drama. It is a movie where humanity's reputation is defended by a short-order cook punching monsters in outer space. Sometimes greatness needs a different measuring stick.
4Blu-ray Edition
Home Video Distributor: Arrow Films
Available on Blu-ray - October 12, 2021
Screen Formats: 1.85:1
Subtitles: English
Video: 1080p
Audio: English: LPCM 2.0
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; single-disc set
Region Encoding: Blu-ray locked to Region A
Welcome to the Arena, where the fighters come from across the galaxy and humans haven't mattered in fifty years. Steve Armstrong is a broke short-order cook whose talent for throwing punches earns him an unlikely shot at the most brutal sporting competition in the universe. With manager Quinn in his corner, Steve battles his way through a collection of increasingly dangerous extraterrestrial opponents toward reigning champion Horn—but powerful forces behind the Arena have no intention of letting a human become the galaxy's newest hero. Part sports movie, part space opera, and completely committed to putting rubber monsters in a boxing ring, Arena is exactly the kind of wonderfully overambitious science-fiction spectacle Empire Pictures was born to make.
VIDEO
Arena receives a new 2K restoration by Arrow Films sourced from the last known surviving 35mm elements, making this presentation particularly significant for a film whose original materials have proven difficult to locate. The limitations of the surviving source occasionally make themselves known, but that's a small price to pay for finally seeing this thing in a proper high-definition presentation.
The station's neon-soaked interiors, colorful alien makeup, production design, and acres of foam-latex extraterrestrial flesh benefit enormously from the increased resolution. Arrow also includes an alternative full-frame presentation, an especially interesting addition for viewers who originally encountered Arena during its VHS and television life.
AUDIO
Arrow supplies the original lossless stereo soundtrack, which proves perfectly suited to the film's mixture of sports-movie bombast and bargain-basement space opera. Dialogue remains clear, the Arena crowds have suitable presence, punches land with satisfying impact, and the assorted futuristic machinery and creature noises contribute to the wonderfully busy atmosphere of the station.
This isn't reference-disc sonic material and doesn't need to be. It sounds clean, appropriately energetic, and faithful to the original presentation. Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing are included.
Supplements:
Commentary:
- See below
Special Features:
Arrow's supplements aren't massive, but what's here focuses on exactly what makes Arena worth revisiting. Peter Manoogian's commentary provides plenty of production context for a movie whose ambitions routinely outran its resources, while Not His Arena gives co-screenwriter Danny Bilson the opportunity to look back at the film's creation. The real treat is Empire of Creatures, with makeup-effects artist Michael Deak digging into the army of rubber, latex, and mechanical aliens that gives the movie so much of its personality. The alternate full-frame presentation is also a welcome inclusion, particularly for anyone who first encountered Arena during its VHS days. Throw in the trailer and image gallery and this isn't the most overloaded disc in the Empire of Screams set, but it does a good job celebrating the handmade ingenuity that allowed Empire to turn a limited budget into an entire goddamn galaxy.
- New audio commentary with director Peter Manoogian, moderated by film critics Matty Budrewicz and Dave Wain
- Alternative full-frame presentation
- Not His Arena — new interview with co-screenwriter Danny Bilson
- Empire of Creatures — new interview with special makeup effects artist Michael Deak
- Theatrical trailer
- Image gallery
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