Yor: The Hunter From the Future

Yor: The Hunter from the Future

Italy, 1983

Director – Antonio Margheriti

RCA/Columbia Home Entertainment, VHS, 1983

Run Time - 1 hour, 28 minutes 

We first posted Yor's nifty tab/flap RCA box way back HERE, but it seemed time to give it a more thorough treatment and by chance, our friends over at Ed's Pop Culture Shack did the same thing....

Not content merely to skim the profits off the still cooling carcass of the sword and sandal cum caveman cycle, Italian director Anthony M. Dawson or Antonio Margheriti as he was sometimes known, decided to weave his ridiculous half-baked story arc into another popular genre, this one culled from the tattered edges of an epic space opera franchise that would later be consumed by a giant evil mouse.



Utilizing the last-minute-generic change of heart for which the Italians held a peculiar affection, Dawson does his countryman and contemporary Bruno Mattei one better by filming a kind of what-if version of Planet of the Apes in which Taylor hits his head during the crash and wanders the planet searching for his identity. (The opening scenes of Beneath the Planet of the Apes suggest that this is precisely what happened since the first film.) Of course, its nearly twenty years and four sequels late, but so were Yor’s special effects, resembling more the homemade, rubber-bat stylings of another late sixties sci-fi television franchise than anything out of the relatively more technological 80’s.


But that’s par for the course with Yor. Even the man behind the mullet-wig, Reb Brown himself was a couple of decades out of step, detouring through European cinema just like Bronson, Eastwood and others did when jobs were scarce in the States. Again though, that was in the late sixties, and those guys had comebacks in the 70's and 80’s when tough-guys were in style along with the president. So those jobs weren’t scarce in the 80’s, Reb just never had what it took to be a tough guy. He’s hard not to love as the scenery-chewing whatever he’s playing, but in spite of his paucity of emotion, he’s simply too cuddly to cut it. His jaunt across the screen as Captain America in the 70’s being perhaps his most memorable domestic role, was nevertheless laughable because the guy lacked the steely ex-paratrooper chutzpa that the character demanded. That’s probably why they deliberately wrote him as the son of the original Captain; plausible deniability.

Yep, its Luciano Pigozzi, the old guy from ExY3K

So too is Reb as Yor, way, and I mean waaaaaaayyyyyyy behind the times. Ostensibly a caveman in the Fiction-olithic era, the film opens with a bang, but quickly devolves into a monotonous whine. By the end we discover that indeed, like its better known simian predecessor, Yor’s planet shared the same fate, and a present that looks like the past is actually a dystopian, post-nuke future. By now, precisely thirty years after Yor’s release in the States it would be superfluous to describe or validate the film, nor do I feel masochistic enough to try. Others have already done so, and better. People familiar with the type of product Margheriti produces, Last Hunter, Cannibal Apocalypse, will not be surprised by Yor’s rambling, sleep-inducing middle act. For the blissfully ignorant in search of something so-bad-it’s-good (as I was, many years ago when I found Yor,) it should be noted that euphemism is highly subjective. Legendary among fans of bad and Italian and particularly bad-Italian, which is a distinct flavor, Yor represents a particular depth of ridiculously inept filmmaking. I can think of other shitty movies that I enjoy more, but few that try so hard.

This French poster art comes courtesy of www.golobthehumanoid.com. I could be wrong, but it looks very much as if it was painted by master comics artist Philippe Druillet.

Other image credits from top:

That's my VHS box

She Blogged by Night

University of Alaska Southeast

Naturalistic, Uncanny Marvelous

 

The Barbarian

El Barbaro (The Barbarian)
a.k.a. Conquest

Italy, 1982

Director - Lucio Fulci

Platino Video, 1995, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 28 minutes

Here's an interesting one as far as distribution goes. Video Treasures circulated this tape although under the above Platino Video name, ( think "Latino") which also bears Mexican Home Video label in the bottom right corner. Funny though, the last is written in English...
In any case, Conquest, or "The Barbarian" as it is titled here, was filmed in Mexico, presaging Deathstalker 3 by 5 years or so.

Willow

Willow

United States - 1987

Director - Ron Howard

RCA Home Video, 1988, VHS

Run Time - 2 hours, 10 minutes

Hey, I know it's a pretty mainstream video that's readily available on DVD, but if you notice the red border on the box there, it may bring back memories of other boxes with a similar motif. RCA/Columbia kept the same design for a long ass time, a vestige of the early days of VHS when the quality of the physical product was judged on the reputation of the studio.

The cover/poster artwork for Willow was created by John Alvin, the man responsible for the promo art of such classics as Bladerunner and Rhinestone among many, many other films.

Games of Survival

Games of Survival

United States - 1989

Director - Armand Gazarian

Rae Don Home Video, 1989, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 25 minutes

I can generally get behind a movie that’s clearly been made with sincerity and sysiphean determination, especially if the end result is still a sad and trashy mess. With some very glaring budget constraints, Games of Survival, with title singularized exclusively for the box, does pretty well for itself in the sad and trashy department. The overall plot however is absolutely crucial to these restrictions, for the story hinges on a suspension of disbelief which has very little physical evidence to anchor it. Let me explain. The plot is actually rather complex, and concerns an intergalactic bad-guy(s) who have enslaved numerous other planets. For some reason they find the momentary benevolence to allow a representative of each of the slave cultures to fight it out to see who’s home planet will be spared their evil wrath. All of this is channeled in such a way as to avoid including any of the physical aspects of the story that might make its budget (even more) painfully obvious. Virtually all of this backstory with the exception of a static shot or two of the bad guy is revealed in the dialogue between characters in the rest of the movie.

”The rest” consists entirely of the captive slaves who have been “transported” to their arena of combat, A.K.A. modern Los Angeles to engage in poorly choreographed combat over a trophy orb. In the meantime they have to pretend to be perplexed and frightened by Earth culture and technology a while filming on location, on video in the streets of LA. This entire unsubstantiated explanation approach to the motivational background of all of the characters is, if not terribly original, is at least well done in Games of Survival. It doesn’t make “the rest” any less believable even though it is just a bunch of muscular dudes in goofy barbarian outfits pretending to beat each other up. In fact, it’s all pretty damn hilarious, and the fact that it's all dropped in your lap with a bunch of excuses makes moments like this encounter with the strange convenience food of Earth downright hilarious:

Sure, the guy might just as well be from the South Georgia Islands and still have no idea what a frozen pizza is, but the fact that he is an extra-planetary barbarian with a guido pompadour mullet makes it so much more entertaining to watch him pretend to be perplexed. Maybe his planet was called New Jersey?

I thought this was going to be terrible, I really did. Just look at the cover, this guy looks like a total jackass with his cheap goggles on. The person who gave it to me said it was gonna be pretty bad too, and I respect that guys opinion. But the 75% that wasn’t obscured by rolling static was actually quite entertaining, for a fly-by night shot on video picture anyway. Iwas also rather amused by the fact that Games of Survival was released by Rae Don Home Video, a company I had not heard of until I was handed this tape. Browsing through the covers at Criticonline suggests that Rae Don was perhaps preemptively doomed by the limited appeal of their catalog. But of course, like Games of Survival itself, the absurd simplicity of the whole premise is a work of art.

Yorythmics: Sweet Hunter From the Video Future

What do Yor The Hunter From the Future and the Eurythmics: Sweet Dreams the Video Album have in common?

Why, those crazy tab-boxes from RCA/Columbia Home Video of course!
Allow me to wax nerdy for a second; these boxes are super cool, even more so than those crazy double-flap boxes that VCII was putting out in the early 80's. What can I say, I like technical packaging. I also like that the brand was identified by the similar package design. This was typical of the period when home video was still a new concept and studios wanted people to associate a certain level of quality with their brand. Branding and trademarking took place in packaged food products in the late 1800's in exactly the same way. Of course, when home video took off they realized it was a big waste of money to have to make thousands of fancy die-cut boxes like this and everybody switched to the standard single flap-top/open bottom. And who said the future would be better?

Yor The Hunter From The Future

Italy - 1983

Director - Antonio Margheritti

RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, 1983, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 28 minutes

Eurithmics: Sweet Dreams The Video Album

United Kingdom - 1983

Director - Derek Burbidge

RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, 1983, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 2 minutes

Deodato's Cut and Run and The Barbarians

Cut and Run

Italy - 1985

Director - Ruggero Deodato

New World Video, 1986, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 27 minutes

Director Ruggero Deodato is most famous of course for Cannibal Holocaust, his contribution to cannibal cinema and the fake documentary which many, including The Blair Witch Project copied to such success. But like many Italian exploitation directors of his time he was willing to do just about anything, including coat-tailing popular themes. His House At The Edge of The Park is a direct spin-off of Wes Craven's Last House On The Left, though more viscerally brutal, and Camping Terror AKA Body Count was a sad attempt to cash in on the slasher genre already waning by the time it came out..

But that's one of the things we should love about exploitation film, its attempts to replicate success. Here we have Cut and Run (aka Inferno in diretta) another cannibal film, this time stacked with exploitation workhorses Michael Berryman and Richard Lynch. The theme here attempts to deepen the intrigue of Deodato's prior cannibal films by drawing the jungle and the modern world together more closely, namely via some strange things called sympathetic characters, plot and narcotics. Much of Cut and Run is standard 80's intrigue, but nevertheless quite entertaining. This VHS tape unfortunately takes after its namesake and has at least three minutes cut. One nice thing about it however is the cover art by Chris Consani. I have been unable to find any sources that explicitly credit him with this art, but the signatures match, so I'm satisfied. Nor does Consani have website, Googling his name results in page after page of paintings of Humphrey Bogart, Elvis, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe playing pool. Well rendered, but, I just don't get the appeal. In any case, this is the only movie related artwork I can atribute to Consani, but there are several different versions.
The following two are UK sleeves from It's Only a Movie.co.uk and feature what appear to be alternate versions of the Consani artwork:

 

 The above version, while not quite as intimidating as the following, does feature the suspended Fran character (Lisa Blount) which ads a different sort of menace to the whole thing.

 

Furthermore, according to the book Cannibal Holocaust: The Savage Cinema of Ruggero Deodato, Cut and Run was originally titled Marimba and slated to be directed by Wes Craven. Obviously it didn't end up that way but as you can see above it does prominently star the unforgettable Michael Berryman who also glared out from the screen, posters and VHS boxes of Craven's The Hills Have Eyes parts 1 and 2 (1977 and 1985 respectively.) Deodato really has a thing for Wes Craven.

Deodato also re-hired both Berryman and Lynch for Barbarians, his entertaining last minute entry in the barbarian/fantasy craze that briefly swept the post-Conan 1980's.

 

Barbarians

Italy - 1987

Director - Ruggero Deodato

Media Home Entertainment, 1988, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 28 minutes

Strangely this post began as a short write-up of this amazing VHS tape, but upon remembering my Cut and Run tape, I got sidetracked, so this is what you get. Suffice to say that Barbarians is pretty tongue-in-cheek funtastic as well, despite what should just be skull mashing stupidity. No matter what, ol' Ruggero hits his mark.

Warrior Queen

Warrior Queen
United States - 1987
Director – Chuck Vincent
Vestron Video, 1989, VHS
Run Time – 1 hour 19 min.

Long before I fully understood the unstoppable social force of the behemoth Barbarian genre I fell victim to the allure of the Warrior Queen cover art. At the vulnerable age of 14 this was no surprise. The film however, was a shock to the system, something I was not prepared for. It was like being an ignorant heathen and stumbling into a full throttle religious ritual. It took some time for me to come to terms with the subsequent viewing experience, and a full six years before I was willing to experiment with barbarians again. To be perfectly honest, Warrior Queen is more of traditional sword and sandal picture than barbarian per-se since it is set in the Roman Empire, but the latter term is more appropriate to the abruptly crude content.

In retrospect there was no reason not to take this film at face value, but I can now understand why such a solidly built exploitation powerhouse as Sybil Danning is looking profoundly bored in her role here. What should be a mildly arousing display of young nubile nakedity for sale in a Pompeiiean slave market becomes somehow simultaneously uninterestingly natural and painfully scripted. Part of this is the disturbing lack of dialogue, but mostly it’s the mechanichal disinterest of the camera, as if somehow group coitus is an everyday experience and warrants no special presentation.

But that’s why I wanted to see this movie, because it is special, particularly at 14! It’s not everyday that we get to see Tally Chanell (Vincent’s Slammer Girls) stripped naked in a slave market and sold to a brothel with a giant cock-n-balls obelisk in the foyer. Nevertheless it’s all shot with the grainy clinical expose feel of a 70’s porno film or one of those German “What Your Daughters Are Really Doing” movies. It’s not a narrative but a series of vague threats.

It’s not nonsense either; Nonsense would infer the intention of sense that had failed, but this is a collection of asensical tableaus. Naked people being sold; sweaty guys arm wrestling; people fucking in a harem. No wonder I was traumatized. Judging by the way the women nibble at a their partners like week old corn on the cob, these people feel a bit violated and directionless too.

Suddenly, enter Donald Pleasence (Will Penny, THX1138) who navigates this emotional desert with magical grace. He has always been a strangely convincing loony character actor, but in Warrior Queen his neurotic gibbering is an astrolabe of precise genius that guides him through these shoals of garbage. I can see now that Pleasence is simply a man driven into the safety of his own head by the world’s inability to understand him. He was not a character but simply himself.

Sybil, Rick Hill of Deathstalker 1 and 4, and Tally Chanell commiserate outside Vesuvius' jurisdiction.

Warrior Queen is a Pentecostal tent revival in which the principal actors are dismissively set loose to improvise, move, act, maybe even speak in tongues, should the spirit somehow move them. Alas, only Pleasence, possessed by his own strange demons masters this movie. Practically oblivious to all the other uninspired parishioners, he flits about in his own world having a grand old time while reality literally crumbles around him in climactic Vesuvian footage (which Chuck Vincent stole from Italy’s 1959 Steve Reeves vehicle Last days of Pompeii.)

Deathstalkers

Deathstalker

Argentina/USA - 1983

Director - John Watson

Vestron Video, 1984, VHS

Run time - 1 hour, 20 min.

The first is always the best, if not the weirdest. The box features a great tagline and art that seems distinctly He-Man-ish to me. The film features Rick Hill as the titular character, as well as the late Lana Clarkson who went on to become the Barbarian Queen. Hill appeared again in the unbelievably terrible Warrior Queen with Sybil Danning and again in the fourth Deathstalker.

Deathstalker II

Argentina/USA - 1987

Director - Jim Wynorski

Vestron Video, 1987, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 25 min.

Probably the goofiest and perhaps dumbest of the series Deathstalker II stars Wynorski (whom I've talked about more elsewhere) regular John Terlesky (Naked Cage) as Stalker, and the series only appearance of zombies and goofy cartoon sound effects for almost everything. Monique Gabrielle is the love interest, she went on to do film a slew of B-movies and adult movies. Although I'm pretty sure the Deathstalkers were all backed by Roger Corman during his brief Argentina/Mexico phase, this is the first that bears evidence on the video sleeve in the form of his production company New Horizons.

Deathstalker III: The Warriors From Hell

Mexico/US - 1988

Director - Alfonso Corona

Vestron Video, 1989, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 25 min.

It's been years since I watched this one. It was the most difficult to get on VHS. I tried four times to order it online and only got it on the last try about 6 months ago. I don't remember much of what happens, but the cover art is what first drew me to all of these films. 10 years ago my good friend Regis and I decided we were going to rent all the films with rippling sweaty-dude paintings on the cover, so we did, it was awesome, end of story. All of these paintings and many more 80's Dungeons and Dragons fantasy art featuring epic mullets and impractical clothing were done by Boris Valejo.

Deathstalker IV: Match of Titans

US - 1990

Director - Howard R. Cohen

New Horizons Home Video, 1992, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 25 min.

Finally the man who wrote the entire series gets to sit in the directors chair and let me tell you, does it ever pay off. Many of the sequels have used recycled footage, particularly in the setup, but as I recall this one uses a lot of it. However, my recollection is that many of the names in the credits sounded eastern European, and I definitely remember copious breasts (exceeding the high bar set by the first three films) so I've always held that it was filmed in a former Soviet satellite state where people would do almost anything for American dollars, including bathe each other for the camera. Oh yeah, Rick Hill is back as Stalker and Corman workhorse Maria Ford appears as the love interest. She drew her bread and butter from her chest and Corman's payroll for years.

So, thanks for sticking with me on this brief quest through Deathstalker.In any case it fits with my effort to preserve lost VHS (the Deathstalker/Deathstalker 2 DVD is way out of print last I checked) and the role VHS box art played in drawing me into the exploitation fold. In that sense for me Deathstalker was a case in point. I was inspired by my friend at The Scandy Factory to post some of my old VHS boxes since this is probably all the "review" these films will ever get from me. Check out his blog for loads of great VHS scans, and here for some vintage pics of several of the lady stars.

Barbarian Queen

It’s been over six years as of this writing, but not until this week did I find out that actress Lana Clarkson was murdered. When I heard about her murderers conviction I made a quick internet search and discovered that it was in fact the same Lana Clarkson I thought. Perhaps it’s Lana’s apparent modesty; she was working in a restaurant when she was killed. Or the fact that she was even more attractive at 40 and just looked like a nice person. For some reason I find this whole thing quite depressing.

One of Lana’s first major roles was in 1983’s unforgettable Roger Corman produced Deathstalker, but probably her best known were in Barbarian Queen and Barbarian Queen II (also from Corman). In celebration of her killer’s conviction, I’m posting my older (but slightly re-worked) reviews of the latter two classic barbariansploitation films.


Barbarian Queen
United States/Argentina-1985
Director – Hector Olivera
New Concorde, 2003, DVD

In a happy grass hut village, a bunch of happy forest people are celebrating the wedding of the prince, Argan (B-movie fireplug Frank Zagarino) and Princess Amathea (Lana Clarkson). While the princess’s sister is off gathering flowers, she is kidnapped and the village is raided by leather hat wearing thugs who kill a bunch of them and take the rest prisoner. What they don’t do is take care of Amathea, who struggling to raise her overly heavy visibly dull sword above her head, vows revenge.

She soon discovers several other refugees from the hairspray tribe of Hollywood. They team up, leap in some convenient canoes and paddle to a nearby outpost. There they clumsily knock a bunch of the badguys on the head and rescue Amathea’s sister. From there the journey toward anti-climax continues.
Soon, they run into a group of rebels led by a one-eyed, one-armed purple-clad rebel leader, and a poorly dubbed daughter. (filmed in Argentina with local actors) The rebel gang maintains a hideout underneath the very spray-foam and chickenwire castle village from which the evil leather hat guys oppress their empire. Enforcing a cruel pastel-fabrics only law, the evil king intends to hold the empire in a perpetual state of commercialized Easter. Bucking the advice of the on-site expert villagers, Amathea spontaneously decides to free Argan. She is caught of course, and strapped topless to a torture rack by the nerdy weasely dungeon master. The demographic has been secured sire.


She escapes and rejoins the rebels, now allied with enslaved gladiators led by Argan. Just as they are about to begin their revolt a bunch of the gladiators betray them, but no sweat, Argan and Amathea manage to pull it off anyway, and in a one minute battle, free the entire kingdom by killing all 10 soldiers who garrison the flimsy castle.

Barbarian Queen only serves as a vehicle for Clarkson’s assets, but manages to heap enough low budget ineptitude around that premise to keep it propped up and entertaining. Despite a façade of feminism, knowing Roger Corman, it’s incidental to making a film starring women. But he did make a sequel.

Barbarian Queen II

Barbarian Queen II
United States/Mexico - 1989
Director- Joe Finley
New Concorde, 2003, DVD

Lana “wanna see my boobs” Clarkson is back to reprise her role in this straight to video sequel. Her name this time is changed to Athalea, and her plight is that of the daughter of a missing benevolent monarch. Held captive by her evil usurping uncle, Athalea refuses to give him the magic spell that controls the royal scepter. His rule cannot be consecrated without it, so it seems logical that the only person who knows it should be executed right?

But, she escapes and is pursued into the forest by her uncles goons. She is rescued by a barbarian valley-girl and taken to her camp for leather and fur cheerleaders. She immediately gets into a fight with the skanky redheaded loudmouth, whereupon they roll into the convenient nearby mud hole and tear each other’s tops off. Within moments Athalea is the new leader of the mostly female shantytown beggar village.

They ladies run a low budget smash-n-grab act in which they continuously ambush the usurpers soldiers. Among these is Aurion (chisel featured TV actor Greg Wrangler) who as a child was Athalea’s friend and lover. He displays his nominal loyalty to her father with a grope and dispassionate exchange body fluids in the forest, then the rebels send him back to the castle to warn Usurper of his impending downfall. Something tells me a guy who thinks a glue-on van-dyke is sinister isn’t going to listen to reason. This film, like its predecessor, was farmed out to Latin America, in this case Mexico. Thankfully the land of Luchadores does lend a bit of goofy melodrama to many of the bad guys.

Disguised as nuns, Arhalea and the cheer squad infiltrate the castle, are captured, and once again, a dungeon master straps Athalea into an apparatus and rips her top off.
“What an awesomely disgusting sight” he says with a grimace.
Bingo, the movie just made its money. She jiggles for a while, dangling above a bed of spikes.

She escapes, is recaptured, jiggles some more, and then is freed by Aurion. They book it back to the forest hideout where she recovers from post-traumatic jiggling stress disorder. Her dad’s retainers show up with his mouldering corpse, and Athalea is galvanized into attacking the Usurper, but there is a surprise nonsensical plot featuring usurpers bratty daughter who steals the scepter spell, but she is captured so it doesn't matter. The rebels use this as a pretense to attack the castle anyway.

Fortunately after burning out his bulb on numerous other Corman projects including the Deathstalker flicks, writer Howard Cohen read Robin Hood and lifted the plot wholesale, so this flick is more interesting than Barbarian Queen, though lower budget. Lana is only slightly more willing to fill the "talent" quota in this one, and only one other person follows suit. Blame it on Catholicism or an excess of plot, but let’s not pretend here, Corman’s sour apple has fallen a long way from Conan’s tree, Lana is the only thing that makes each bitter bite worth chewing.

A slightly better version of the original cover art by Boris Valejo who also did all the covers for the Deathstalker movie. I'm pretty sure they were just paintings he'd already done that New Concorde bought the rights to (Roger Corman is very cheap). Valejo is one of the kings of hairspray and baby oil barbarian art back in the day. His most recent movie work was the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Movie poster