All bets are off at a corrupt intergalactic fighting competition where a system removes the fighter's advantage, no matter what species and puts them on an even standing. Made and released in the UK in 1989, like Robot Jox, Crash & Burn, Oblivion and other Charles Band productions the lack of money is obvious but this B-film captures the imagination which many larger budgeted films fail to do. Arena taps into a time when fighting films had peaked and Rocky was deep rooted in the conciseness along with WWF specials. Director Peter Manoogian offers plenty of showdowns. His direction is fine and many of the makeup and special effects still hold up. In a cast of outlandish aliens Claudia Christian features as Quinn and the Christopher Reeve-a-like Paul Satterfield's Steve Armstrong works as the stereotype hero.Despite its clichés and the fact it was never going to win any Oscars its many references to other science fictions and fresh concept makes it an enjoyable low budget science fiction.

An intergalactic fighting competition between champions of various worlds has traditionally been won by a species much larger and stronger than humans. Entering the contest, a human finds he has to battle against not just his opponents and his self-doubts, but the corrupt system.....If you've seen this movie before, you'll already know how bonkers stupid the whole thing is. This is one of those films that I saw trailered on many a straight to video action movie 25-26 years ago, but then when it left the video shelf, it vanished without a trace, and to my knowledge, it's never been on TV or had a DVD release.So thank heavens for NetFlix, as I have now seen one of my legendary lost films that I thought had vanished forever.And it's just how I thought it would be,man absolute cheese fest featuring a non-existent lead who makes Van Damme and Lundgren seem like Olivier.To describe the film is a very heady thing to do. Take The Running Man, Tron, Bloodsport, Barbarella, with the budget of a Troma film, and your almost there.We basically have a guy who can become the next world champion of the titular sport, but I order to do so, he has to fight lots of people in suits, claymation, and puppets. That's the premise of the film.And there's a subplot involving a man with silver paint on his face risking losing everything if our hero wins.As you can imagine, the fights are non existent, so the majority of the time we see our hero from his adversaries perspective, and someone behind the camera hitting him with rubber hands, and it's as fun as it sounds.The effects are dazzlingly awful, but the puppetry is actually rather good for such a low budget film.It's a shame that this wasn't more widely recognised, because this could have been a wondrous TV series.A must for all bad movie fans everywhere.

If I were to rate this film based on my memories of it when I was ten years old, it would be a straight nine out of ten. Unfortunately, I'm not going to do that, since I watched it again just last year (I'm 26 now). Anyway, it turns out this film is actually a badly acted, poorly produced and boring effort. The fights which impressed me so much as a child now reveal themselves for what they are - a funny looking blonde guy pretending to use martial arts on a man in a rubber suit (a technique recently revived for the atrocity that was Alien Vs Predator). The script is badly written, and does no credit to what is actually a pretty good premise for a sci-fi action movie. There are certainly some interesting ideas. Perhaps a remake should be considered?

Although it is probably ten years since I last saw this film I do have it in my loft along with hundreds of other films I bought from my local video rental shop. I found it very entertaining and yes although not the most serious film ever made you had to take it as was. Simply an action scifi made for a young teen audience. For a limited budget film I thought the creature effects and set design were pretty good and the acting was by far not the worst I have seen. So for me at a time when I was a 17 / 18 year old wanting to get into the effects business it touched a cord with me along with other scifi flicks and I am now working in the film industry and have been doing so for the past 5 years