Spartacus: Gods of the Arena

Once when I was a young lad, I watched "Caligulia."  I watched it more as a dare than anything else.  Rather than finding a daring film, I found a boring one that only became interesting when boobs were present.  Yes, being a man boobs do up the interest level of nearly any scene.  The state of the union address could definitely use more boobs, and not the the elected kind.

There are boobs in "300," but they being man boobs do not thrill me.  But the film was well made.  A technical triumph.  It is also,  a paean to a group of people that thought throwing babies off a cliff was a good freakin' idea, and these were our heroes.  It was a type of film that as you watched took your breath away but afterwards a moment thought would leave you somewhat disturbed.

Now, I have seen "Spartacus:  Gods of the Arena," which is in every way a melding between these two films in style.  It is a bloody, sexy mess dealing with people with the morals of alley cats on crack cocaine.   It involves one house of gladiator fighters who are trying to move up in the world.  The House's Master is lusty, cheating, backstabbing little so an so who'd sell his own mother to get an afternoon bout in the arena.  For reasons I can't fathom his gladiators are loyal to him and gladly fight to the bloody death.

The scene that best sums up this series is when they are having a business discussing and stop for a crap stop at the local public outhouse.  There they casually continue talking as they squat then use a stick for clean up, and share the same cloth for clean up.  Perhaps historically accurate, but did I really need to see that?