In the late ’80s and early ’90s, muscly hunks and bodybuilding were all the rage. We had Arnold, we had Stallone, we had ThunderCats, we had WWF’s Prime Time Wrestling… and we had American Gladiators. If you’re too young to know or too old to remember, the show featured a bunch of coed superjocks who took on average joes in various physical challenges — like jousting each other with pugil sticks atop raised circular platforms or assaulting each other with weapons full of ammo (well, orange tennis balls). It was campy, it was fun and the gladiators lived like rock stars… until it all went down in flames.
Directed by Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Murder Among the Mormons) and Emmy winner Tony Vainuku (Independent Lens: In Football We Trust), Muscles & Mayhem: An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators looks back at the phenomenon that was American Gladiators, the athletes who became overnight sensations and the drama that led to its bittersweet end.
Muscles & Mayhem: An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators also includes footage of former gladiators Marisa “Lace” Pare, Cheryl “Sunny” Baldinger, Deron Michael “Sunny” McBee and more.
The series gives a behind-the-scenes look at American Gladiators — how it started, its biggest stars and all the chaos that marked its nearly decade-long run. Airing from 1989 to 1996, American Gladiators was the first of its kind — where everyday people from across the US engaged in physical competition against hulking professionals known as gladiators. Eventually, the series became the No. 1 syndicated program in the world. But as its popularity grew, so did the gladiators’ egos — and their resentment about how they were treated by the network. Muscles & Mayhem: An Unauthorized Story of American Gladiators captures the rise and fall of the hit game show.
