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Every pop culture phenomenon now gets an additional 15 minutes of fame courtesy of a nostalgic non-fiction documentary. So it was perhaps inevitable that someone would turn their attention to American Gladiators, the influential TV series that ran from 1989 to 1996 (and was briefly revived in 2008) and pitted contestants against titans in a variety of brutal David-versus-Goliath athletic challenges. Fortunately, that someone is director Benjamin Berman, who, as with 2019’s The Amazing Johnathan Documentary, transforms what might have been a conventional profile piece into a multilayered and moving treatise on success, exploitation, betrayal, brotherhood, and the catastrophic warfare that can come from chasing a beloved dream.
The latest installment of ESPN’s celebrated “30 for 30” series, the two-part American Gladiators Documentary (May 30) begins as a straightforward revisitation of the past, providing an outline of the show’s inception, rise to stratospheric heights, and cancellation, via interviews with a few of the larger-than-life men and women who starred as Gladiators. Gemini (Michael Horton), Malibu (Deron McBee), Elektra (Salina Bartunek), and Sabre (Lynn “Red” Williams) offer candid first-person accounts of their heady celebrity experiences, along the way touching upon the daddy issues, gangland anger, and party-hard wildness that colored their time doing battle for the viewing pleasure of millions. Their colorful anecdotes lend the material its humor and its sorrow, the latter born from personal tragedies, professional flameouts, and the myriad injuries that left them bruised and battered—and, in the case of Thunder (William Smith), permanently disabled and deeply regretful.
The main attraction in The American Gladiators Documentary, though, is Johnny Ferraro, the impresario who shepherded American Gladiators to the top. A former Elvis impersonator and native of Erie, Pennsylvania, Ferraro admits, “I was looking for something to be in the limelight.” and, “I wanted to build my own thing.” What he concocted was a movie about rugged blue-collar Americans who became superheroic do-gooders, and he took it to Hollywood, where for six years his pitch fell on deaf ears. However, after watching Oh, God! You Devil and pledging to sell his own soul to Satan for a shot at the big time, he met a receptive producer who loved his American Gladiators concept and wanted to make it a TV show. For Ferraro, it was the moment he’d been waiting for, and he seized it with relish.