Bullet Points: The Gladiator (1986)

Monday Night Football was an institution on ABC from 1970 to 2005. Beginning in 1981, once the NFL season was over, ABC would fill the football void with the ABC Monday Night Movie.

In this edition of Bullet Points, I will be looking back at a movie that premiered on ABC on Monday February 3, 1986… The Gladiator!

• Road Rage: The movie begins at a Los Angeles area bar, where Mary is done with her waitressing shift and heading home. Mary taps a car in the parking lot with her bumper while backing out and since nobody seemed to be around to see it, she didn’t get out and kept on driving. What Mary didn’t know was behind the tinted windows of the car she bumped was the driver of the mysterious black 1969 Dodge Charger… a driver with some apparent road rage issues. The Charger follows Mary and gets right on her ass and starts ramming the back of her vehicle… Mary’s forced into the guard rail a few times and then ultimately plunges to her death!
• Meet the Bentons: Rick Benton (Ken Wahl, The Taking of Beverly Hills) is a mechanic by trade who finds himself raising his teenage brother, Jeff (Brian Robbins, Camp Cucamonga). Jeff is an avid soccer player and recently got his learner’s permit and is anxious to have his older brother, Rick, to take him out driving. After putting off driving lessons for a few days, Rick finally relents and he and Jeff hit the streets in Rick’s truck… it will turn out to be Jeff’s first and last driving lesson with Rick. After gunning it at a yellow light… the Charger from the opening of the movie is now coming up fast on Jeff and Rick. Much like earlier, the Charger starts ramming his victims from behind, eventually forcing them to collide with a semi-truck!

• Rude Awakening: Rick wakes up in the hospital and finds out that he had been in a coma and that Jeff didn’t make it. The news hits Rick hard… Rick’s friend Joe Barker (Stan Shaw, TNT Jackson) visits Rick in the hospital and tries to impart some words of wisdom to his friend, telling him as crazy as it sounds, some good will eventually come from this tragedy. You can tell Rick is not buying it… Rick gets another visitor in the form of Lieutenant Frank Mason (Robert Culp, Big Bad Mama II). who is investigating the hit and run incident and doesn’t seem completely sold on the story Rick is telling him about the driver of the other vehicle intentionally trying to kill him and his brother.
• Pick Up the Pieces: Rick is discharged and takes a cab back to his now empty home. When he gets inside the emotions hit and Rick finds himself sitting in Jeff’s room, mourning the loss of his brother…. The next day Joe shows up and drops off Rick’s truck that he repaired for him, Joe then invites Rick to grab some lunch with him, but Rick mentions he is going to check out a support group that was suggested to him when he was being discharged from the hospital, the Citizens for Highway Safety. At the meeting, Rick hears from other people who have lost a family members due to drunk driving incidents. A father in the group, who lost his son, asks the questions… What are they going to do about it? What are they going to do to prevent drunk drivers from taking more lives tonight? You can see the wheels inside Rick’s head starting to turn.

• Hit and Run: We see the killer strike again when a trio of young ladies decide to follow him after he leaves a liquor store. And with some help from the spike spears that come out of the center of his wheels, the young ladies will never have the opportunity to be old ladies… Meanwhile, Rick is at home cutting out newspaper stories about the string of fatal hit and run incidents in the Los Angeles area and pinning them to his living room wall, along with plotting the incidents on a map… Then Rick hops in his truck turns up “Screaming in the Night” by Krokus and looking for erratic drivers… This continues for several evenings and after an incident at a fast food drive thru, where Rick and his truck, fight back against two hooligans trying to cause problems down at Danny’s Dogs, much to the delight of the manager of the establishment and the patrons who witnessed the whole thing.
• Vigilante Mobile: After the hot dog incident, Rick soups up his truck, loading it up with armor and “gizmos” as they are referred to in the movie, including a four pronged hook/winch gimmick installed in the bed of his truck that he can launch at vehicles… Rick stops some drag racers and some drunken hooligans on his first night out. Both incidents he radios into the police and when they ask for identification, he refers to himself as The Gladiator!… But The Gladiator still hasn’t come across the killer that took Jeff from him. Instead the killer is just adding to his kill count, taking a couple out with some explosive car flipping action, after they dinged his car with their car door at a supermarket parking lot.

• The Hot Spot: Nancy Allen of RoboCop fame plays talk radio host/potential Rick love interest, Susan Neville. Susan hosts a night time call in radio show called The Hot Spot. When the press starts reporting on The Gladiator it is all anyone wants to talk about on her show. Susan makes it clear that she is on the side of the cops and vehemently disagrees with what The Gladiator taking the law into his own hands… not realizing that the mechanic who fixes her classic Corvette and that she is sweet on, is The Gladiator… Susan becomes a voice of reason and a confidant to Rick, especially after he realizes he is in too deep and crossing lines… Rick attempting a citizen’s arrest on a guy who was speeding to get very pregnant wife to the hospital was a huge reality check.
• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Police Station: The guilt builds up to the point that Rick calls Lt. Mason and admits that he is The Gladiator and he is going to turn himself in. As luck would have it, on his way to the police station, the killer pulls up alongside Rick at a red light and Rick hops out of his truck to confront the killer, who opts to speed off instead and the chase is officially on! Rick radios Lt. Mason and then pursues the killer into a junkyard where the two will play a little cat and mouse, some demolition derby and even a climatic game of chicken before the cops arrive.

I enjoyed The Gladiator‘s vehicular twist on the revenge genre that I love so much. I have talked about it before but Ken Wahl amassed an impressive action filmography during his career, while not receiving anywhere near the fanfare of his contemporaries… The weakest point of The Gladiator is the lack of a backstory for the killer. Was he just a homicidal maniac who preferred to kill with his car as opposed a gun or a knife? Or was he a guy like Rick, who lost someone due to a driving incident and then went so off the deep end that even the smallest infraction caused him to have the worst road rage in recorded history?… Nancy Allen, Stan Shaw and Robert Culp make for a solid supporting cast and Rick’s vigilante mobile is pretty sweet.

These Bonus Bullet Points are pretty sweet too…

• Familiar Face: Rick’s boss, Garth Masters, was played by Disco Duck himself Rick Dees.
• Ready, Willing and Abel: The director of The Gladiator was Abel Ferrara, who I recalled as the director of Fear City.
• If You Ever: ...wanted to hear Stan Shaw sing a few lines of The Four Tops’ hit, “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” then The Gladiator is the movie for you.