Yor, the Hunter from the Future (1983)--MMT full review!

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Yor, the Hunter from the Future (1983)

Coming out in 1983, the heyday of the Italian Conan the Barbarian rip-off phase, as well as the Italian Star Wars rip-off phase and the Italian Road Warrior rip-off phase, Yor, the Hunter From the Future blends "homages" to all three of these iconic movies into one ghetto-fabulous concoction of b-movie schlock. Consistently rated by everyone from the lifeless film geeks at imdb.com to my third cousin Lisa as one of the worst movies ever put to celluloid, it is indeed an often painful experience to watch. But still, someone has to review it, so it might as well be me.

Our setting is a fairly standard Post-Nuke mutant-infested desert wasteland, but with the added bonus of the return of some species of dinosaurs! I'm flashing back to Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (if you get that without Googling it, then you are my hero). Humans have regressed to Stone Age living, with nothing more high-tech than flint knives and crude bows. The only remains of pre-war civilization we see are a few long-abandoned stone walls and foundations. This movie was filmed in a region of Turkey where for millennia the locals have lived in houses cut out of the sandstone cliffs, and the starkness and age-old weathering lends itself well to a post-apocalyptic movie such as ours.

The landscape, typical.
Let's meet a tribe of wasteland hunter/gatherers, sporting the latest in fur loincloths and leather bikinis and living in crude log lean-tos and worshipping the sun. And yet, they all have the absolutely shiniest whitest teeth imaginable (my current pet peeve). Jean Auel wouldn't have stood for white teeth, so why should I.

"Savages"!
As our film opens, we follow two of these villagers, an old man and a sizzling hot brunette, as they wander about the landscape hunting for food for the tribe. The woman is named Ka-Laa and is played by 33-year old Corinne Clery, an Italian gal who has been in a bunch of movies I've never heard of and one I watched one time about 25 years ago (Moonraker). For being a wasteland hunter, Ka-Laa has one of the most heavily styled and curled 1980s hairdos you will ever see, but she does have a very sexy lithe body with curves in all the right places. Her skimpy fur and leather bikini is also suitably Raquel Welch-esque, which helps a lot.

Ka-Laa.
The old man is named Pag and is played by 56-year old Luciano Pigozzi (here credited as "Alan Collins"), who was in 105 movies, of which I have seen only this one (I suck, I know). He's a jolly balding man with a good humor and hair arms, and just screams "noble self-sacrifice at the end".

Pag.
While distracted by some sort of ferret thingie with spikes (or maybe a mutant guinea pig, I don't know) they are trying to catch for lunch, Pag and Ka-Laa are ambushed by a huge-ass Triceratops! Yes, a Cretaceous Era dinosaur, though an incredibly immobile and dim-witted dinosaur that can't seem to do more than shake its head slowly and growl weakly (seriously, if you are going to have a dinosaur in your movie, at least spend the lira and make it quasi-believable).

Raah!
Out of nowhere leaps Yor! He fights the Triceratops toe-to-toe, dodging and ducking under the dinosaur's lame attempts at gouging and poking, all the while looking for openings to thunk the beast in the head with his wicked battle axe. Eventually he gets in enough thunks that the creature keels over dead! Yor then drinks some of the dinosaur's blood as he says it gives you strength to drink the blood of your victim (I tried this with my buddy Nick when I smoked him in Halo the other day, but he was not amused).

Drinking blood, and he's not even a wannabe quantum Goth!
Yor is played by 35-year old Reb Brown, an ex-pat American. His hair is his most prominent feature (even if it looks like a wig), all California surfer dude blonde and shaggy. If not for the bulging pectorals and the too-short loincloth, he'd look like Dana Carvey's Garth from Wayne's World. Yor has one unique possession, a silver dollar-sized metal medallion around his neck (the only metal seen anywhere in this movie until the third act), which he has had since childhood but doesn't have a clue where it came from or what it symbolizes.

As Ice-T so eloquently told us, pimpin' ain't easy, we all know that, right? No matter what era you live in, scoring with the girls comes with risks and consequences, be it a jealous lover or a three-horned dinosaur up in yo' face. Yor (the hunter from the future!) is a pimp daddy of the first degree, a rugged platinum blonde lady's man with the bling to match his come-hither eyes. No village girl or cave princess is safe from his insatiable craving for Stone Age tang, because that' how Yor roll.

Yor, the Pimpalicious Hunter from the Future!
Buying a ticket on the Yor meat-train is Ka-Laa, who falls instantly in love with him on sight, the first of many women in this movie to swoon over his hairless body, his vacantly blank stare, and his smarmy cheese-eating grin. They go back to the tribe's village to celebrate all the free dinosaur steaks. The tribal elder tells of a woman with similar medallion who lives "beyond the mountains with the desert people" and who is the "daughter of the gods, who descended to the earth in a tongue of fire". Remember all this.

Elder, with stereotypical caveman hair.
That night a dance party (!) is held in Yor's honor by the grateful tribe. Triceratops tenderloins are served medium rare and an impromptu band beats out a rhythm on sticks and rocks. Seeking to impress Yor, Ka-Laa gets up to do a sultry and suggestive dance, swaying her hips like she's Christina Aguilera as Yor's jaw goes slack and his eyes bug out.

Ka-Laa shakin' it like a Polaroid picture.
Just then the village is attacked by Neanderthals! Yes, that's what they look like, overly furry men in caveman fur togas carrying femur bone clubs who shamble around like apes and grunt a lot.

A Neanderthal, note the purplish facepaint. They look like TOS Klingons or even Wookies.

The Neanderthals storm the village, kill the men and take the women, and burn the rest. Yor, Pag and Ka-Laa are the only ones to escape, though Yor has to fight his way out, swinging his axe with reckless abandon. The Neanderthal leader is especially fond of Ka-Laa, and orders his fighters to fan out and search for the escaped girl, who has a nice head start by now.

Yor takes on the Neanderthals.
After putting some distance between them and their pursuers, Pag goes back to check on the ruins while Yor takes Ka-Laa to his "secret tree house". Yor claims that he used to hide out here as a child, which makes you wonder how he's been living in this area for so long and only just today bothered to go down and introduce himself to the villagers. But maybe they are a transit lot, and only just recently moved to this area, following some game or the weather or something. Speaking of game, where does everyone get those thick fur togas and all that leather from? Not once all movie do we see any animal with fur, though that in itself doesn't mean they're aren't any out there, but the environment doesn't seem to lend itself to large enough mammals to provide all that fur and hides.

In the tree house, Ka-Laa asks about that medallion, about which Yor can only say he's got his own unanswered questions.

Anyway, the next morning, the Neanderthals catch up to them (though we wonder how, you'd think Yor would have covered his tracks better, maybe they followed the smell of his sexy-time lovins for Ka-Laa). A big fight ensues, with Yor's axe and Pag's bow giving good accounts against the bumrushing Neanderthals. In the end, however, Yor is knocked out and tossed over cliff! Ka-Laa is captured and hauled off, while Pag escapes unhurt.

Ka-Laa captured (sorry, a lot of these scenes take place in near-darkness, so getting quality caps off my fuzzy DVD-R copy is difficult).

Yor recovers, crawls back up out of the crevasse with nary a scratch, and he and Pag make to recover Ka-Laa. But first Pag tries halfheartedly to talk him out of any rescue mission, noting that "by their laws" Ka-Laa belongs to whomever captures her in battle. Yor correctly points out that he's not bound by their laws as he's, you know, Yor, the hunter from the future and all.

To the Neanderthals' cave hideout now (lord, this movie has a lot of caves, who knew Turkey was riddled like Swiss cheese like this). The Neanderthals act like cavemen, grunting and dragging their knuckles and gnawing on hunks of raw meat, all the while chasing and abusing the terrified female captives. The Neanderthal leader has eyes only for Ka-Laa, and it looks like we are about to have some inappropriate contact.

Am I the only one who thought the Geiko cavemen were insipidly stupid? Sure, the first couple of spots were funny, but by the time they made that blessedly short-lived series, the schtick had grown cold.

Hang gliding! Does this not look like Flash Gordon?
Yor rescues Ka-Laa with some well-placed kicks and punches, but they are forced deeper into the caves as the Neanderthals regroup. With their pursuers hot on their tail, Yor breaks open a rock and earth dam that's holding back what seems to be an underground river, and floods out the cave system. The majority of the Neanderthals are washed away to their deaths, but the leader and a few others escape (remember these). Also, it's not at all clear if the gaggle of captured women and children escape the raging flood waters. Yor never makes an effort to rescue the women, or even gives them a second thought, and Ka-Laa and Pag never mention them either, even though they are part of the same small tribe. The scene is cut weird, so maybe the captive women survived by virtue of reaching some higher ground, but the fact that our "heroes" don't even bother to stop and think about them is a bit cold.

The poor women, lament for them.
They head into "the hills" to find the woman with the matching medallion (remember, the tribal elder mentioned it way back when?). They walk for an indeterminate amount of time across a variety of parched desert landscapes before they reach an old abandoned town, with the houses carved out of the rock walls of the cliff (I've seen a lot of this before in the underrated Slipstream).

Abandoned town.
Yor goes in alone, after first giving Ka-Laa a long slow kiss to soothe her worries. After wandering around a bit, Yor is ambushed by a swarm of rag-tag mutants with flaming forked sticks! These are the "desert people" who "worship fire", but they look like typical Italian post-apoc extras.

Mutants with firesticks.
Captured, Yor is taken into a rock cut to see the girl, who apparently likes to hang out in caves with diseased mutants, which makes her pretty freaky in my book. Her name is Roa and she's played by one-shot actress Ayshe Gul, who is maybe in her early 20s and fairly pretty (nice legs!). Roa has a matching medallion around her neck, and it's clear that she and Yor are from the "same race". She's a goddess to these mutants, though it's against her will that she stays.

Roa, who here looks a bit like a legal Emma Watson.
She shows Yor (and I'm not making this up) two other dudes frozen inside a wall of ice inside the cave! These two guys both have matching medallions, and the girl makes it (somewhat) clear that all four of them came to this area together (I think, the dialogue is maddeningly vague). What this all means is explained only obliquely, and it really doesn't matter a hoot to the final wrap-up anyway.

Roa and Yor talk about making Aryan babies and stuff.
The problem is that the mutants believe in sacrificing any strangers they catch to the gods! Yor tries to guilt the girl into helping him, staring at her intently as he's led away, the girl's eyes welling up with tears. However, she doesn't actually try and save him, he saves himself, which he might want to mention to her later.

Yor implores with his deep blue eyes.
Yor starts swinging and kicking and grabs the girl in one arm. They fight their way out, setting fire to a lake of gas (a torch tossed into a stream in the cave ignites like it's the Delaware River). For some inexplicable reason this causes the ceiling of the cave to collapse, killing the mutants and threatening to squish our fair hero and his lass. But escape he does, with the lovely Roa wrapped up in his beefy arms. As soon as he's outside, they run into Pag and Ka-Laa, who had come to check on him. Ka-Laa sees Roa sitting on Yor's lap and there's an instant flash of rage-chick jealousy (I can't blame her, really, as Yor will continue to prove himself to be a pimptastic womanizer as the film goes on).

Roa gives Yor a lap dance (watch those hands, buddy!).
Once awkward introductions are made, they all head off towards the ocean to get to that island Roa spoke of. They find a wide river and stop to make a crude raft of lashed-together logs. Here we see the boiling jealousy by Ka-Laa as the younger and vastly hotter Roa pulls Yor's attention away from her. They Tom Sawyer it down the river, steering by poles and luck, headed towards the sea.

Girl fight!
Suddenly, a couple of Neanderthals attacks! Wait, how the holy hell did they get here? The last time we saw them our heroes were halfway across the planet, did the Neanderthals really follow them all this way, across the desert, down the river, all the way to here? Why? I guess it doesn't matter, nothing in this movie matters. All that matters here is that Ka-Laa's ass is crackin' in this movie. I do remember her now, wasn't she the girl who chased Roger Moore in the helicopter before getting killed by some gadget thingie? Was that her?

Anyway, Yor jumps in and slaughters everyone like usual. But Roa takes a mortal hit and lies dying. She gives her medallion to Ka-Laa (though watch the continuity error as the medallion looks different in each cut) as a sign of...something, I don't know, the bitch just tried to kill you and now you are giving her your prized possession? I just don't understand women.

Playing in the surf, she does look yummy in bright sunlight.
Their reverie is interrupted by screams from nearby! They rush to see a Dimetrodon attacking some young girl and two kids! Yes, a sail-backed quadruped Dimetrodon, a reptilian creature from an entirely different geological epoch than the Triceratops we saw earlier. Even Cadillacs and Dinosaurs stayed more consistent than this movie. Still, this prop is vastly more mobile and detailed than the paper mache and duct tape Triceratops.

Dimetrodon!
Being the dashing hero, Yor jumps in to save them without thought of his own safety, with a little help from Pag and Ka-Laa, and with a lot of help from the dinosaur, who just sits there and lets them hack and slash at it with knives and axes. This fight offers little difference from the previous Triceratops fight, except that the Dimetrodon puppet looks scarier, with "authentic" jaws and teeth and even a long flicking tongue that lashes out as Yor uses his superhuman strength to subdue it.

Fighting the Dimetrodon.
All that over, introductions are made. The saved girl is named Tarita and she's played by Marina Rocchi in her only role of note. She's maybe 15 or so and with her smooth Asian features and zero-percent body fat is by far the most attractive female in this entire movie, though she has "statutory rape" tattooed all over her. She instantly falls in love with Yor, of course, though he stays (somewhat) loyal to Ka-Laa. Watch all through this scene as Ka-Laa burns a hole through the sexy little Tarita as she chats up Yor. Priceless!

Tarita (she's not of age, so stop it).
They meet the girl's tribe, which is about 50 or so fishermen living in Polynesian thatch huts along the beach. There are a lot of half-naked children running around and a goodly percentage of attractive young girls, all of whom take an interest in the buff Yor with his Nelson hair and Will Smith "Aww shucks" attitude. Ka-Laa is not amused, though her defense is mostly just to stand on the fringes of conversations and pout like a six-year old.

Attack on the village!
Tarita does gives Yor her late father's boat to go to the island (remember, where it's said his "people" are). So, Yor, Pag and Ka-Laa jump in this quite well-made sailboat constructed of reeds and hemp and set sail. Ok, how do they know how to sail? It's never been clearly noted that any of these three have been on a large body of water before, let alone been on a sail boat, let alone tried to navigate one across an open sea. Within seconds of casting off, however, Pag and Ka-Laa are working the sail like seasoned midshipmen and Yor has a steady had on the tiller.

The boat, which is kinda cool in a Thor Heyerdahl kinda way.
They sail an indeterminate distance across the sea, seemingly navigating by the stars and the script, until they spy a large forested island in the middle of nowhere. They are doing fine until the boat flounders in heavy seas off the island, the waves smashing the boat and tossing them all overboard.

Ka-Laa screams as Yor is lost to the storm.
Washed ashore, they are separated. Yor awakes alone on the beach like Odysseus, and wanders around a bit before being captured. He's caught by half a dozen black-suited androids wearing body armor and helmets like a Death Star computer technician!

The Overlord.
The Overlord's dastardly evil plans are to one day rule the world (duh). To do this he has created an army of these mindless Vader-lookalike androids to follow his orders. The rest of the base's human population have no choice but to go along with the Overlord's plans as he controls all the power (for now).

Yor is taken inside the base and examined on a Star Trek-ish medical table. His medallion turns out to be a sort of computer disk, on which is recorded a history of his past, which is most helpfully played back to him via video (egregiously bad effect). His name is actually "Gallahad" and he's the "son of the rebel Asgard". It seems that Yor's parents were once citizens and Yor was born here. His dad, however, was banished from the island with Yor when he was about five or so. Their ship crashed, his dad was killed and Yor was forced to fend for himself. It seems that Yor's survival was unknown to anyone back on the island until just now. You know, none of this really explains the girl from the mutant caves and the two dudes frozen in the ice, but that's not important right now.

Yor on the table.
So there's this girl here who might be a doctor of some sort (she does some button-pushing with the medical table thingie). Her name is Ena, and she's played by Frenchie chick Carole Andre, who apparently worked in Italy a lot, probably because they had comprehensive health care and the food was better. Of course, Ena falls in love with ultra-pimp Yor! Thankfully, Yor never has a chance to consummate anything with Ena, both because he's busy trying to wrap his mind around all the fantastical revelations he's being pummeled with every second and also because Ena is butt-ugly with nasty teeth and the cheekbones of a Hungarian potato farmer.

Ena, where's my paper bag?
Yor meets the Overlord now, but doesn't click well with him for obvious reasons. Yor suddenly seems to have a lot of knowledge about things he shouldn't, as well as absolutely zero problem adjusting to going from a Stone Age lifestyle to one with robots, computers and genetic engineering. Yor asks about Ka-Laa and Pag, and the Overlord says they landed on the island after the boat sank but doesn't know where they are now.

Where they are now is hiding with the "rebels". As with all totalitarian dictatorships, there has to be an underground rebellion of disaffected citizens brewing, and our movie is no exception. All the rebels wear matching white jumpsuits with red pips and they all look vaguely Scandinavian, suggesting that blondes really will inherit the earth after all, despite what all the brunettes you've ever dated told you.

Rebels.
It turns out (no surprise) that Ena is a rebel! She leaves Yor and comes to see Ka-Laa, and sets it up that Ka-Laa is allowed to sneak away to find Yor (why, makes zero sense). Ka-Laa and Yor (who the Overlord also inexplicably allows to wander around, though it might be part of his evil plan) meet up in a "hall of mirrors" filled with vaguely pornographic stone statues. This is a really pointless scene that grates on my nerves, but then again, this entire last act is pushing me over the edge with its sheer goofy badness. Every time a character attempts to vomit out a chunk of exposition, it either blatantly contradicts what was said before, makes no damn sense, or is so convolutedly filled with metaphors and preachy allegories that you just want to shoot yourself. I'm more concerned with the fact that with all these women in this horrid b-movie, not one of them takes her top off. Seriously, what the hell?

Scary hall of mirrors. Sure.
The Overlord and a bunch of androids corner Yor and Ka-Laa now that they've reunited (I guess with all his power, he had to let Yor find the girl for him?). The Overlord tells them of his latest and greatest plan to create a new model of androids using sperm and egg from them (huh?). It seems his "older models" of androids are too dumb and slow for his liking, so he plans on making more advanced ones, melding genetic material with solid state technology to create the perfect cyborg hybrid. This is another scene filled with rambling technobabble dialogue and overly dramatic pauses, and once again Yor seems to have way, way too much knowledge of genetic engineering and integrated cybernetics for a guy who not a week ago was out in the bush hacking at dinosaurs with his stone club and wiping his ass with a leaf.

The Overlord talks to Yor and Ka-Laa.
Just before the Overlord can do any brain surgery (!) on them, the rebels launch their long-awaited attack! About two dozen white-suited men, led by Ena and Pag, storm into the room, funky laser guns firing. The good guys fire green bolts, while the bad androids fire red bolts, which is helpful as we watch the action. Freed, Yor joins Pag in using the rebels' laser guns to drive back the waves of androids. Wow, Yor and Pag sure mastered the art of advanced directed energy weapons very quickly! Now they are crack shots, never missing as they fire from the hip from twenty yards away.

Laser tag!
A lot of the coming fight scenes are strongly "influenced" by Star Wars. The blocking and framing of numerous shots mimic similar scenes from the opening battle on the rebel cruiser, as well as Han and Co.'s running escape from the Death Star. I'm not complaining, though, if you are going to steal, then steal from the best, I say.

Can't see it much here, but trust me, that's awesome.
One old blind rebel (who is their leader, it seems) reaches a computer room and begins shutting down the androids sector by sector, all the while taunting the Overlord over the intercom. And yes, this is old Ben Kenobi shutting down the Death Star's shields and then getting into a name-calling chest-thumper with Vader as the rest of our heroes make a run for the Falcon. Again, though, steal from the best. The Overlord goes himself to defuse the bomb, as his androids are useless now. He is confronted by Yor, who stabs him with a candy-striped wooden pole before fleeing. The Overlord (who is looking like a poor man's Kenneth Branagh now) stumbles about the place for a bit, despite the nasty, sucking chest wound, and almost makes it to the "turn off bomb" button before expiring dramatically.

The Overlord, mortally wounded.
They head for an aircraft of sorts to escape the base before the bomb goes off. There are a number of running fire fights along the way, with many losses on both side. Much to my surprise, the old man Pag survives to make it to the aircraft alive, the single most amazing thing about this movie. I would have bet my paycheck (well, what is left of it after the 62% of it that my ex-wife is raping me for) that Pag was going down at the end, sacrificing his life for our heroes, gasping out some awesome death monologue as Ka-Laa weeps and Yor's jaw clenches with renewed determination.

Pag, go figure.

The aircraft zips out of a Pegasus launch tube as the bomb explodes. The whole island base goes with it, poofing in a raging ball of fire and sparks. Though, come on, what the hell? The rebels were able to neutralize the androids, and the Overlord was mortally wounded, so why destroy the entire base with all its priceless and irreplaceable technology and knowledge? Now they have to rebuild all over from scratch (though they do have Yor's manly seed to jump-start a new race of blonde supermen).

The aircraft flying off.
Sequel set-up? Maybe, let's hope not.

Written in April 2008 by Nathan Decker.