A sci-fi cult hit in the making, 1989’s Arena pits a human fighter against aliens and robots, with Deep Space Nine’s Marc Alaimo and Armin Shimerman in the mix.
I am a devout follower of Shudder, the streaming service for all things spooky. But as a science-fiction dork, I am often found crying out for an SF/F companion to the horror streaming service. In the streaming era, what’s replaced Sci-Fi Channel circa 1999?
The closest answer I have found is Tubi, the ad-supported watch-for-free streaming service that, in an effort to compete with the majors, has accumulated a vast library of VHS-ready titles worthy of a mom-and-pop video store. This is where I watched Arena, a 1989 sci-fi movie I had never heard of that I will be recommending to my cult-film-fanatic friends for at least the next year.
Produced in the late 1980s, but only dumped in the U.S. as a straight-to-video release in 1991, Arena stars Paul Satterfield as Steve Armstrong, a space-station-employee short-order cook who whips up the wrong order on and winds up on the wrong bruiser’s bad side. After surviving a brawl in the kitchen, Steve catches the eye of a boxing promoter who believes he might the rare humanoid who can make it in alien boxing. This begins Steve’s career as a champion of the Arena, where mortal men can fight buglike creatures and cyborg beasties. (A sci-fi tech thingamajig is used to equalize the playing field, holding stronger competitors back to the level of weaker homo sapien specimens.
