Arena (1989)

Now this is my kind of schlock! Directed by Peter Manoogian (Eliminators), 1989’s Arena is a low-budget, high-effort production seriously committed to its silly-ass premise of a dude punching rubber monsters in the face. It’s Super Punch Out in space if Little Mac was 6’4”, but still little compared to most of his alien opponents.

Soap opera regular Paul Satterfield stars as Steve Armstrong, a human working as a cook on a space station. Satterfield is tall and long-limbed, his reach making the fights against larger opponents slightly less ridiculous. It also meant I nicknamed his character “Stretch” Armstrong. Steve is probably the weakest element of the movie. As written there is not much to him, and Satterfield is fine in the role but doesn’t bring any extra charisma to make up for what is missing on the page. It is a functional performance of a functional character, thankfully he is surrounded by a more colorful cast of character actors and creatures. Although I do have to give Satterfield props for rocking Steve’s ridiculous ring gear, shiny metallic gold short shorts with a matching gold Borat-style monokini and lightly padded pec protectors. I don’t think I could keep a straight face in that get up, let alone get in front of a camera.

Steve, cover your shame!

Steve ends up in a cafeteria-wrecking brawl with a customer and gets fired. He got into the fight defending co-worker Shorty (Hamilton Camp, also a folk singer and prolific voice actor in 80s and 90s cartoons). Shorty’s Nebulack culture puts him in a Wookie life-debt situation where he follows Steve around for the rest of the movie trying to help him. The alien Steve beat up was a fighter in the titular Arena, so the alien’s manager Quinn (Claudia Christian, The Hidden and Hexed) comes looking for Steve. The Arena has a wonderful piece of ridiculous technology that alters the “power level” between different competitors of different species to handicap matches and keep them even (via blue and red light beams of course). Despite that balancing, the Arena has not seen a human champion in decades. Could Steve be the one to do it? In a very funny moment, Steve explains that he spent his whole life training for the Arena and it’s all he ever wanted, but Quinn has the wrong guy.

The movie spends a surprising amount of time fleshing out its world before plot machinations get Steve into the fights. That plot involves Rogor (Marc Alaimo), crime boss and manager to the Arena’s top fighter, mechanized monster man Horn. Rogor looks like John Saxon cosplaying as Richard T. Grant's manager character from Spice World. Rogor’s rat-faced henchalien Weezil (Armin Shimerman) feels straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon (except even uglier in real life).

Rogor enjoys a space beverage, Weezil reads a space newspaper

Also in the mix is Jade (Shari Shattuck, The Naked Cage), Rogor’s girl and nightclub singer. Steve has vibes with both Quinn and Jade, but is too dumb to read the obvious Rogor red flags from Jade. I would also have a hard time ignoring Shari Shattuck if she showed up in a sexy shiny space dress, but Steve’s blood seems to take an extra long time to return to his brain.

wait, what were we talking about?

Richard Band did the music for this film, and I have to note the first song we hear from Jade (via hologram) is one of the most atrocious auditory abominations I have ever experienced. It is a collection of the most unpleasant sounds an 80s keyboard could produce and shrill singing, arranged for maximum dissonance. Later, she performs something that feels like a 3 minute intro for an Enya song that never actually starts, a Neil Cicierega-like act of musical edging.

Bah Gawd, Horn and Spinner are fighting in the stands!

The aliens include some impressively realized make-up and prosthetics, full body suits of varying quality and mobility, and whatever extra masks were lying around the effects workshop. I particularly loved Spinner, a fighter who has lizard man legs (you can see where the costume legs end!), a lizard man head, an old robot prop for a torso, and a headpiece with exposed brain under glass. The design aesthetic for many of the aliens is “nasty cyborg,” with painful looking implants jutting out of body parts that look like they could get infected.

umm do you guys need any antibiotic ointment or anything?

The space fashion consists entirely of outfits that are shiny, sequined, sparkly, or all three. There are a decent amount of background extras and crowds, and they give everybody something even if it’s just a shiny space hat or heavy space eyeshadow (SO much heavy space eyeshadow!). Some characters look like they walked off an actual Star Trek set, some look like they were just dancers in a New Wave music video.

thrilling head gear!

I really enjoyed the movie's chintzy but fully committed aesthetic of “very 80s sci-fi world on a budget.” That’s good, since the actual fight scenes are more amusing than exciting. They are competently put together, but mostly consist of Steve and aliens sloppily smacking each other around. My wife and I were consistently delighted watching him sock different monster men in the face, but not everyone is built like us. I would recommend this to people who enjoy colorful and cheesy sci-fi worlds, but anyone who comes for the action will be disappointed. This PG-13 movie is more “Saturday Morning cartoon come to life” than full-on fight flick. Although I wouldn’t object if they made a decades later Direct-to-Video sequel that focused more on the fights, I would love to see Scott Adkins deliver flying kicks to kooky aliens!

In a weird coincidence, half of the main cast for this space station-set movie would go on to spend years as regulars on American television’s two 1990s space station sci-fi series. Claudia Christian played buttoned-down Commander Ivanova on Babylon 5 for four of its five seasons (1994-97). My childhood crush on her from that show never went away, so I was happy to see her looking cute in the kind of silly shiny space outfits Babylon 5 usually avoided.

Ivanova would never...

Weezil turned out to be good practice for Armin Shimerman. He would go on to play Ferengi bartender Quark, another shady character buried under alien make-up, in almost every episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-99). Last but definitely not least, I somehow didn’t realize that main villain Marc Alaimo was motherfuckin’ Gul Dukat on Deep Space Nine for 35 episodes! If nothing else, this movie might help you win a Trivia Night in the future. 

edit: looking at other reviews I see effects legend Screaming Mad George worked on this, apparently creating the big, long-legged monster mo-fo that Steve fights at one point. The legs don't really work, but the whole thing still looks awesome and nasty!