I agree! This one gets very little love, even from ardent schlock-o-philes, but I think it's a hoot.
Here's my contribution to the thread:
New Gladiators.
Dig that "high quality" miniature work.
Lucio Fulci's silly, incredibly cheesy stab at the sci-fi/deathsport genre. Awesome overuse of star filters, chintzy production design, laughable dialogue, ridiculous costumes, shoddy special effects, a downright awesome cheeseball synth score by Riz Ortolani, endless amounts of sweaty-faced overacting, Fred Williamson sportin' a pretty sweet headband, Al Cliver playing the biggest waste of space ever to take up space onscreen, high school science project-level miniatures, and soooo much more. And, yet, it all remains surprisingly watchable. I stumbled across the movie mostly by accident. I knew a guy who was selling a bunch of crappy Italian post-nuke movies on used DVD and this was one of the flicks I grabbed up, solely because it was a Fulci flick and I'm a huge fan of Fulci's horror films. But then I waited for MONTHS to watch it because I was convinced it would be unenjoyable dung and that I'd made a huge mistake in buying it. Finally, I caved, and I stuck it in the DVD player right before bed, figuring I'd look at it a little, get the gist of it, then turn it off and go to bed. No, instead I watched it all the way through... TWICE. The second time I watched it with the audio commentary, which was done by two Troma employees (one of 'em being Trent Haaga) who, naturally, had absolutely nothing to do with the movie at all. Nevertheless, the commentary is a riot. Anyway, after that I actually started to watch it a THIRD time, but finally gave in to my need for sleep and turned it off halfway through. In any case, since then it has become a high-ranking personal favorite, and I show it to all my friends at some point. It's so BAD but in such an ENTERTAINING way, and it's ripe for the MST3K treatment (riffers will find a LOT of material to work off of here). Even if you don't like Fulci's horror stuff, if you dig really campy, really poorly made goofball garbage with a 70's sci-fi flavor you should give it a look-see. HIGHLY recommended.
Here's some more YouTube vids:
The Troma DVD release trailer (it's worth noting, by the way, that the "lovingly remastered" DVD Troma put out is, of course, about the same quality as an old VHS... however, with as tacky and schlocky as New Gladiators is, that works perfectly in favor of the film, if you ask me)
What I like to call the "danger room" scene, gives you a good idea of the laughable FX techniques (gee, I wonder if that seizure-inducing strobe light effect exists solely so the hologram characters can "appear" and "vanish" between frames, lol), the hacky over-the-top acting (the guy in the nazi hat is absolute gold, by the way, if you watch the movie all the way through a couple times, he'll quickly become one of your favorite things about it), and the overall WTF-factor at play throughout the entire picture. The music, you'll notice, is awesome, by the way.
I actually started writing what eventually became a freaking EPIC unfinished review of New Gladiators for Bearded Weirdo Reviews. Since I've recently decided to completely take down Bearded Weirdo Reviews, it seems the review will probably go unfinished. One of these days I'll see if I can track down the incomplete version and maybe post a few excerpts that explain better just what it is about New Gladiators that I find so utterly magical.