June 29: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is New Horizons! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

No, not that Death Game.

Directed by Randy Cheveldave, who mainly worked as a producer, and written by Blain Brown, who directed and wrote Web of Seduction and I’m Watching You, Death Game is also known as Mortal Challenge.

This starts with Los Angeles in the year 2023. You know, last year. The City of Angels has been split in two by an earthquake. The rich and powerful live on a new island while the poor survive in the old L.A. Detective Jack (Timothy Bottoms) has been hired to find Tori (Jody Thompson), the daughter of one of the elite, Mr. Barrington (Brent Fidler). She and their gardener, Coz (Lauro David Chartrand-Del Valle) have fallen in love and she keeps sneaking into the ruined city to see him after her father forces them to split.

Tori has been taken by the Centurions, the rulers of an underground arena, just like Hawk (Nicholas Hill), the gang leader Jack has just fought. Our detective protagonist teams up with the gang’s tech geek, Freeze (Alfonso Quijada), and start looking for where this battleground is.

The arena is run by Malius (David McCallum), who is so obsessed with Rome that he’s turned this part of the City of Flowers and Sunshine into a coliseum, complete with a gladiator named Rogius (Richard Faraci) and a cyborg called Grepp (Evan Lurie, who was also Hologram Man).

McCallum was Illya Kuryakin on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Simon Carter on Colditz, Steel on Sapphire & Steel and Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard on NCIS. That’s a great run but with every joy comes some pain and he’s the man who lost Jill Ireland to Charles Bronson. He recovered just fine and was married to fashion model and Katherine Carpenter for 58 years.

In the audience of rich kids watching these fights is Alex (Vince Murdocco), the man Tori left because she was afraid of how much he loved watching these fights. Oh yeah — so is a very young Michael Buble, watching and voting thumbs up or thumbs down.

All of these post-apocalyptic gladiator movies need a femme fatale, so this has Felicia (Korrine St. Onge, who was one of the vampires in Bordello of Blood). She’s nearly orgasmic over all this to the death man on man action.

Just take a listen to this theme song and think, someone’s mom rented this instead of Mortal Kombat when they got confused.

You can watch this on YouTube.