From The Vault - Roman Holiday

Gladiators (2000)

Starring: Rumply Crow, Richard Harris Directed by: Riddidly Scott Rating: R Genre: Action Other

From The Vault - From The Vault is a special feature of Oswald's Screen Scene. Here we present reviews of movies past that we feel might interest, provoke or dismay our readers. Review Director Scott's take on the sword-and-sandals flick plops bloated meat puppet Rumply Crow ("The Fornicators") smack dab in the middle of a Nike commercial, only instead of ripply athletes sweating green mucus, Crow shows his acting chops by spitting out real blood and teeth. Eschewing the traditional fat suit, Crow purportedly put on eighty pounds through daily injections of Crisco, though this doesn't explain the pulsing fat ring around his tonsured skull. I'm not sure about this one. The film's exciting enough, but when emperor Biggus Diccus (played by Smiths lead singer Morrison) nails Crow's bulldog "The Kraken" to the Coliseum and Crow's good eye begins to throb, the Bronsonian fireworks to come are all too obvious. And I cannot decide if the choice of composer Esquivel was inspired or merely mad, but it did provide a odd discordancy to the many an action sequence. There's no question that Scott knows how to play a disembowlment set piece but, as the great Norma Shearer once said "it's the pictures that got small." Look for a cameo by Mike Meyers as an Ethiopian Princess. The man is the Lon Chaney of his generation.