Friends, Romans, Countrymen; Lend me your hot guys wearing nothing but leather loincloths! Your beloved Caesar was out walking the streets of our humble little Empire the other day, casing the finer violin shops (not that I’m thinking of fiddling whilst I set the city on fire or anything hahahaHAHAHA) and trying to find some of that delicious new dessert, Baked Pompeii (it’s like Baked Alaska, only with less ice-cream and more potash) when it occurred to me that chakram-throwing Amazonian princess Xena hasn’t really gotten much work of late (save jumping out of her millionth cake at a lesbian corporate event last week); and despite the fact that our grandparents (or at least Sophia on THE GOLDEN GIRLS) used to routinely warn us that watching Gladiator movies would turn us Gay, the only desire I got whilst watching GLADIATOR was to keep Russell Crowe as far away as possible from any script I didn’t want thoroughly mangled. So I decided to kill two Christians with one Lion, as it were, and throw together a project that featured Xena (or at least the actress who plays her, anyway) and enough blatant homoeroticism to make Caligula choke on his horse (assuming he wasn’t already). So oil up your favourite eunuch, shove an olive branch or two behind each ear and beware of strange drag queens named Ida Smarch as we cross swords, spears and other implements with the boys and grrrls of SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND (Wednesdays, Go! 9:30pm).
The original 1950’s movie of SPARTACUS was pretty heavy on the homoeroticism, despite the restrictions of the homophobic Hays censorship code. This new version, however, takes the phallic-shaped homoerotic baton and runs with it, cranking up the Gay-o-meter from Mr Humphries nudge-nudge-wink level to full on DANTE’S COVE lock-the-doors-and-drop-your-drawers flaming. There’s so many half-naked (or fully naked) oiled men throwing nets over each other and getting the thumbs up (or down) that it’s like some kind of extreme Gay speed dating show… with lions (some executive somewhere just read that last sentence and is now pitching it to a network as a really good idea).
SPARTACUS: BLOOD AND SAND is from Rob Tapert, creator of both HERCULES THE LEGENDARY JOURNIES and XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS (and he’s also Mr. Xena). In this version, Spartacus is an honest legionnaire from ancient Thracia (Capital: Thorae; Currency: Dinar; Main Exports: hot guys, leather thongs and body oil), who makes the stellar career decision of publicly questioning his commander, Legatus. Glabus decides that seeing as how Spartacus constantly shows off for the camera that he has zero percent body fat, the man would make excellent low-joule lion lunch, and has him whipped over to the colosseum to play Gladiator faster than Russell Crowe could mumble ‘G’day; welcome ter Ancient Rome, Mate’. Unfortunately for Legatus Glabus, but fortunately for Spartacus (and people who want the series to last longer than 15 minutes), Spartacus takes to gladiatorial combat like a Rob Tapert production takes to New Zealand, and he’s soon the darling of the Empire’s answer to the WWF (no, not the one with the pandas).
Along for the chariot ride is John Hannah, the unconventionally hot Scottish star probably most familiar to audiences as one half of the Gay couple in FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL, and the comic relief uncle in the MUMMY movies. No stranger to gratuitous male nudity himself, here Hannah mostly keeps his bits in his toga, playing the role of the Gladiators’ head trainer (they really should have named his character Coachus). Hannah takes a shine to Spartacus (not literally- they have nude slave men to do the actually oiling of the buff bods) and teaches him how to be an even better medieval mauler than he already is.
Coachus’ wife, Lucrecia, is played by the one and only Lucy Lawless, Xena herself. A literal scarlet woman (Lucrecia is decked from head to toe in crimson robes and has a head of hair Julia Gillard would gladly throttle Tony Abbott for), Lucrecia is desperate to provide her husband with an heir however, for some reason, Lucrecia is unable to get pregnant by her husband (I suspect the reason has something to do with him constantly leaving her high and dry to go spend time teaching buff naked men how to manhandle each other); so she goes to the gladiators for some secret conjugal visits- and as Spartacus is the reigning champion of colosseum-kickassery, she reasons that his sperm is just as virile as the rest of him.
High camp, hot guys in various states of undress (we get oodles of full-frontal in the opening episodes); homoeroticism – there are several gay gladiators; the first one goes the predictable route (straight down the gullet of a bear- and not the fun, human variety) but the others still have a pulse as of this writing; and Xena herself using the gladiators as her own personal love-stallions. What’s not to love?! Grab your comeliest slave-boy and check it out!
Gavin Pitts
