Description
An ambitious costume drama, relying heavily on flowing gowns, lavish sets, and spectacle.

Cast
Includes Toni Ribas, Rita Faltoyano, Frank Gunn, Mandy Bright, and many others.

General Impressions
First, it's directed by Antonio Adamo, so I'm pretty much expecting beautiful women, beautifully photographed - but with sterile posing, camera-looking, and fake dubbed moaning. And this movie delivers as expected. The heat of the sex is mostly lost in the overdubbing and camera-mugging.

Sex
On the plus side, we have all-natural breasts, and some nice dicks playing hide and seek in their adorable turtlenecks. Also of note, no high heels for a change, something that my husband noted with appreciation.

In the first scene, Rita offers Frank 'wild sex' with barbarian women. It proves to be not-so-wild, and the barbarian women are pretty tame-looking, with shaved pussies, and apparent access to rich emollients and moisturizers, good dental care, etc. The ancient Roman men apparently shaved their dicks and balls.

They proceeded to do the same RCG (Roman Cowgirl) so often depicted in old pottery and mosaics. (Okay, so it took me two scenes to stop picking apart the discrepancies).

Rita plays with Dorothy Black, and Frank and Tina T. move through doggy, doggy anal, and ATP, ending with the usual Ancient Roman facial.

The second scene is a three-man, four-women orgy. Again, a lot of it looks like the women are posing for Vogue. Dubbed voices and swirling orchestral music remove most of the remaining heat of the scene. But not all of it. The last bit was removed by Tiffany craning toward the camera during a dp, angling her head at unnatural angles to make sure the camera could see her unblinking face between the forest of knees and elbows, and repeatedly making a mouth like the MGM lion roaring (her yawning was, of course, out of synch with the dubbed sound). Seeing as how the only dialogue in this long scene was a few phrases - "Oh yeah, suck it, yeah," "C'mon suck it," and "I love it," why not have natural sound? Is "Ooooooooh, Ooooooooh, ahhhh" really that different in Czech?

Alright, with the women outnumbering men, we still end up with 2 men on one women. Knowing the ancient Romans, we couldn't help speculating that the men would have just "left out the middle-man," so to speak, and sampled each other. Adamo did actually address this issue when he was interviewed on the extras disc (he said we were't focusing on that in this movie).

Next, Rita gets it on with Toni, in an adulterous romp that was way better than the first two scenes. RCG, and an RCG anal that pivots to CG, some spooning, and a very nice finish, tit-fucking through her interlaced fingers. Sweet!

Scene four was a standard orgy, three on three, heavy on the RCG. A dp of Lara had both men wiggling, but not getting in too far, and some major gaping. The scene ends in a general dogpile with the jism flying.

We now find Toni Ribas in prison, where Mandy Bright (as Syria) will be allowed to give him a drink of water if she pleasures the guard. The guard whips her a little. Unintentional comedy as the supposedly coerced, reluctant Mandy licks and sucks her fingers, cleaning herself like a cat, then pulls her tits as she sucks the guard, while she writhes. Way, way too far into the scene, Toni yells, "No, Syria, don't." On the cumshot, you can see the mercury fillings in her teeth.

In the last scene, two petulant females, Petra Short and Diane, warm each other up briefly. Two slaves join them, evidently so that the women can service them with blowjobs and RCG. Possibly the scenes are improving, or else my standards have fallen since the beginning of the movie. Now here comes a dp for Diana. Petra sits smiling and watching, although I am sure she is thinking, "What am I, chopped liver?" Petra gets a facial fountain cumshot from Alberto Rey, Diane gets a facial from the other guy. Then, oops! Alberto has a second load for Petra.

Dvd Quality
Though there were a few quirks (for example, the annoying test-patterns complete with bleeps, which preceeded segments of the Behind the Scenes feature), the quality was high, and the extras were numerous. The Behind the Scenes portion partially redeemed this movie for me, giving me a glimpse of the performers without their personalities removed. Boy, oh, boy, what this movie might have been like if the characters had personalities! The 'Making of' feature was self-congratulatory and pompous, and might have you chuckling with derision, but it had some interesting and impressive bits on how the stage sets were constructed.

Summary
Sorry, but the plot is at complete odds with the sex.

They over-reached with the heavy music, the lack of emotional investment in the characters, and the over-use of supposedly stirring images like swords plunged into the ground and clenched fists. They aimed too high; they missed.

Directed by Antonio Adamo

Overall Impression
I am a HUGE fan of Adamo's work, and to be honest I was disappointed with "Gladiator". Sure the Limited Edition packaging is stunning, the sets are impressive, the extras are endless, but the sex just was not at the same level of quality I am used to from Adamo. I think Adamo does a wonderful job of finding new talent, but I really think this film could have used a few more of ...

The Private Gladiator
Collector's Limited Edition
Private
Directed by Antonio Adamo
Starring: Barby, Diane, Dike, Dorothy Black, Lara, Mandy Bright, Petra Short, Pocahontas, Rita Faltoyano, Cindy, Tiffany, Tina, Tina T, Frank Gun, Alberto Rey, Nick Lang, Mike Foster, Claudio Villa, Choky Ice, Bob Terminator, Toni Ribas, Steve Holmes, David Perry, Dieter Von Stain, Tommaso Pampalini, Karl Ben
Running time: Disc one - feature: 2hrs
Disc two - extras:
Making Of...